Vaccination week: fewer and fewer Salland children with ‘injection’

This week is European Immunization Week. This week extra attention is being paid to vaccinations in Europe. This is important and desperately needed, the RIVM said. The vaccination rate has been declining for years, including in Salland.

Judith Teelen of the VVD called the declining vaccination rate last month “reason for panic”. At the end of March there was a regional outbreak of measles in the Eindhoven region. In the months of February and March, four babies died of whooping cough. These are both diseases for which vaccinations are available, included in the national vaccination program.

Free shots
Whooping cough falls under the DPTP vaccination (diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio) and is a booster vaccination that children receive three times before the age of 1 and once more at age 4. There is also a vaccination against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus that pregnant women can take. Measles, together with mumps and rubella, are included in the MMR vaccination, which children from 14 months of age can receive free of charge.

Unvaccinated children
However, figures show that fewer and fewer elderly people are having their children vaccinated. A decrease is also visible in Salland. For example, in the municipality of Deventer, 3.8% of children under the age of two have not yet received any vaccination. Two years earlier, in 2021, this was still 1.9%. So a doubling of unvaccinated people. In the municipality of Olst-Wijhe, the percentage increased from 1.1% to 2.3% during this time. In Raalte, 1.9% of 2-year-olds are now unvaccinated, an increase of 0.3% compared to 2021.

DKTP vaccination rate
A decline can also be seen with ‘separate’ vaccinations. Deventer, for example, has a vaccination rate for DKTP of only 91.3%, in Raalte and Olst-Wijhe this is now 92.7%. In all municipalities, the percentage was still above 95% in 2022, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands.

Success is a curse
Outgoing State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen of Health said about this in the House of Representatives: “Confidence in vaccination has come under enormous pressure in the past few years. Particularly due to disinformation. Due to lies, especially on social media.” Remarkably, the success of vaccinations is also one of the reasons why some diseases are now emerging again. “We are doing so well that we have forgotten how terrible the diseases we vaccinate against are,” says Van Ooijen.

More information
Due to the dangers of the diseases and the visible trend, RIVM supports the European Immunization Week. More information about vaccinations can be found at Rijksvaccinatieprogramma.nl or via vzinfo.nl/vaccinaties.

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