A few days ago we told you that from Europe the decision taken by the government of Spain, to withdraw the varicella vaccine from pharmacies and stop administering it to children (those Autonomous Communities that did it) has not been fully understood. Notice if it is little understood that the current Minister of Health, Alfonso Alonso, is already asking him about it.
And as they ask him, he answers, and we don't know if because elections are coming or because he really believes it, his words leave a door open to hope, because in an interview they did a few days ago on Wave Zero he said that the current situation could change in the future and the chickenpox vaccine could go back to pharmacies.
To be more specific, his words were as follows:
All pediatricians are favorable to being sold in pharmacies, but the reports we have on public health advise against it. Therefore, it is good to try to advance in a scientific consensus on this one and, therefore, that decision could change in the future.
This, in a serious country, sounds like "we will try to see the reasons of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics to defend the chickenpox vaccine and keep it in the recommended vaccination schedule, one more year, we will study the scientific evidence and we will try to reach a consensus to make the best decision. "
The question is, are we in a serious country? Because elections are coming and now there are all politicians who seem most pleasant, most solicitous and thinking especially about citizens, until the day we deposit our votes at the polls and say that of "did I really say that ? "
The vaccine disappeared in 2013
We have been without a vaccine in pharmacies for more than a year because it disappeared in 2013 in a strange government decision, which very few people understand. The explanations were nil, so the reaction of the AEP was rapid.
After a few months, the Ministry of Health gave its first explanations by saying that what they intended with the measure was to avoid chickenpox in the elderly and herpes zoster, as if to say that the vaccine only serves to prevent chickenpox in childhood, but then you take it as a senior and, incidentally, increases herpes zoster.
With regard to herpes, several studies show that this is not the case, and basically it is a matter of logic. Herpes is a complication secondary to chickenpox, which originates because you passed the disease. If you get vaccinated, you do not pass the disease and, consequently, you cannot suffer from it.
In reference to the disease in adulthood, I say the same as we have said on other occasions. On the one hand, if the children are vaccinated, the chickenpox quasi disappears and the elderly who have not passed it or have been vaccinated are quite protected. On the other hand, the US children have been vaccinated from it for decades, so it is they who mark the way forward. If the vaccinated children of the United States, already adults, begin to suffer the disease because the protection has disappeared, it will be established a new dose of remembrance in adulthood. That new dose will be administered there and, obviously, also here, before our children, now vaccinated, are unprotected. It is one of the benefits of doing things so slowly and with such delay with respect to other countries.
So let's see if they really sit down, study the issue, and act accordingly. It is not even that they paid. If it was the parents who had to afford both doses!
