False security
“Vaccines can become victims of the success they have had,” said Nature’s May 26 editorial. It was written in response to the worrying appearance of measles. In 2010, 300,000 measles cases were detected in Europe. Five times the average of the cases of the last decade. Measles has also reached Euskal Herria: Until June 2011 Osakidetza recorded 26 measles cases in the ACBC. 26 cases more than in the previous 10 years. In fact, the marker was zero since the special measles extraction plan was launched in 2000. The focus of this plan was vaccination, like all the plans that were established in the world to overcome measles. The measles vaccine began to be administered and spread systematically from the 1980s, and the number of deaths from measles has been reduced ten times, from two and a half million to two hundred thousand.
Whoever does not see success after this fact is not willing to see it. Hygiene, antibiotics and vaccines always appear at the top of the list when asked about the greatest contribution to health that has increased human survival. Because they have. But because vaccinations are so small the incidence of many diseases, especially in rich countries like ours, it has been forgotten that they are serious and deadly. We do not have diseases in our environment, we have vaccines in our environment, and the side effects that vaccines can have have have taken center stage. And they can have simple, rare, and dangerous side effects. But that cannot distort reality.
It is a privilege to live in a society that, far from worrying about the consequences of disease, has the possibility of worrying about the simple side effect of vaccines. Being privileged does not mean, of course, giving up improvement, but we have to be clear that only betting on vaccines will increase the real safety: that of vaccines and that of continuing with diseases. The measles outbreak has clearly shown us how vulnerable it can be to give up vaccination. Serve as a dose of memory of what we are playing.
Zu idazle
Zientzia aldizkaria
