Medicine, with its continuous overwhelming development, has prolonged life and conquered or conditioned innumerable ills. Doctors cannot escape supporting battles of civilization by collaborating in civic education and global security. The proposal for a law on the vaccination obligation of healthcare personnel would have a clinical aspect to protect the risk of patients and a deontological value in terms of communication between medicine and society
02 DIC –
“In the history of medicine, vaccines represent one of the greatest victories over diseases and are among the most effective aids ever made available to humans”, thus began the FNOMCeO document dated 8 July 2016, drawn up in the midst of the discussion on the Law Lorenzin on the vaccination obligation.
The Constitutional Court, with its sentence of 1 December 2022, confirmed this scientific choice at the legal level, evaluating the values at stake in civil coexistence if the protection of health is interpreted as a right to global security in a world threatened by aggressions that do not they know borders.
The Covid experience has fully confirmed the importance of vaccination for human health, allowing millions of lives to be saved worldwide, at least 150,000 in Italy, and the easing of pressure on hospitals. The Italian population has fully responded to the vaccination campaign and the vaccination rate is among the highest in the world.
The Court deemed the choices of the legislator adopted during the pandemic period on the vaccination obligation of healthcare personnel “not unreasonable or disproportionate” as well as founded the suspension of fees in the event of non-fulfilment of the vaccination obligation. For the Court, there are situations in which the progress of science, for the purpose of joint protection of the individual and the community, allows the provisions of the second paragraph of art. 32 of the Constitution, on the right to refuse any medical treatment, when clear and substantiated scientific evidence guarantees everyone’s health.
Filippo Anelli, President of the FNOMCeO, commented on the sentence stating that “the reasons of science on the effectiveness of vaccines for the protection of the population have been recognized, testified by the adhesion of the vast majority of citizens and by the 470,000 Italian doctors who have been vaccinated , 99.2%, almost all”.
Certainly, upon publication of the sentence, illustrious collaborators of QS, experts in law and bioethics, will adequately comment on the device. Here it is of interest, on the basis of the declarations of the President of the FNOMCeO, to affirm its value on the relationship between law and science and therefore on the politics of the medical profession in such confused and contradictory times.
The protection of the right to health is one of the greatest achievements of the glorious era of social democracy, recognized by art. 32 of the Constitutional Charter. Health is an inalienable right of the individual (only on this occasion the Constitution uses the word “individual” and not “citizen”: health is a right of the person and has no frontiers) and an interest of the community.
Vaccines represent an admirable case in which the individual right and the interest for the other coincide and support each other. Only the evidence reached by science can guarantee this synthesis. During the pandemic, vaccines have demonstrated not only the incredible level achieved by modern technology; what has won is the method of science.
Strengthened by this highly authoritative recognition, the FNOMCeO should resume the logic of the 2016 document. On the one hand, continue the commitment of the Orders to evaluate these situations on a deontological level, intervening on who gave citizens or their patients the advice not to get vaccinated, Another thing is to ask the Parliament and the Government for a regulatory intervention that imposes the vaccination obligation on all public and private health personnel, as a service burden in order to guarantee patient safety in the framework of the protection of clinical risk.
Furthermore, the Federation should stimulate and call upon the Parliament and the Government to issue regulations aimed at improving information and scientific training in schools and in the whole community, declaring itself available to collaborate in any initiative on this subject.
Medicine, with its continuous overwhelming development, has prolonged life and conquered or conditioned innumerable ills. Doctors cannot escape supporting battles of civilization by collaborating in civic education and global security.
The proposal for a law on the vaccination obligation of healthcare personnel would have a clinical aspect to protect patients’ risk and a deontological value in terms of communication between medicine and society.
Antonio Panti
02 December 2022
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