Rome, 23 April (beraking latest news Health) – The pandemic has brought vaccines back to the center of attention as strategic and decisive tools for public health. But in addition to the fundamental vaccination campaign against Covid, the institutions and the scientific world are looking at the immunization of the frail and immunosuppressed adult patient. “We wanted to define a calendar linked to fragility and immunosuppression, which is very widespread and varied”, said Marcello Tavio, president of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (Simit), who today presented a scientific document during the webinar ‘Adult vaccination: the innovations beyond Covid-19 and the Simit recommendations’, organized by Aristea, with the non-conditioning contribution of Gsk.
The consensus document aims to create a calendar for vaccinations of the adult patient with particular attention to people with chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes, renal insufficiency. “Compared to the national vaccine plan – said Tavio – we have focused more on the adult, for whom we have declined various frailties and related to each of these the most suitable vaccinations on the basis of the present comorbidity. This consensus project on vaccination is promoted by Simit but wants to involve all ‘experts’ – he specified – from the hygienic specialists to the Ministry of Health, to the Higher Institute of Health and to general practitioners “.
“The National Vaccine Prevention Plan establishes uniform criteria and a common offer on the national territory – pointed out Laura Sticchi, Department of Health Sciences, University of Genoa – and the recommendations of the ministry must be translated into an offer contextualized in the various situations. In this sense, communication channels between the specialists who treat the patient and the operators of the vaccination services are useful. This not only to sensitize the patient to vaccination but, since it is an increasingly tailor-made tool, also to indicate for each patient the most suitable vaccination course. Our document therefore reaffirms the recommendations for vaccinations, through the collaboration of several disciplines “.
The presentation of the document was also an opportunity to talk about the new vaccine for herpes Zoster, already used in the United States with over 38 million doses administered which, according to experts, in addition to an advantage for patients, represents a benefit for the entire national health system, because it can be administered to immunosuppressed patients, frequently affected by the infection.
“Herpes Zoster represented, especially in immunocompromised patients, an ‘unmeet medical needs’, that is an absolute need”, highlighted Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of Simit. “The vaccine available up to now was a live attenuated virus, not usable in immunosuppressed patients. The new subunit vaccine is a very important step forward, given that Zoster is a very frequent disease in the adult population and with serious complications, so much so that among the after-effects he also has a neuralgia that can last months or years. Having a safe vaccine that allows to guarantee protection from reactivation from the varicella zoster virus – he concluded – represents an important novelty, which has encouraged Simit to give life to this consensus “.