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Italy's Five Star Movement blamed for surge in measles cases
Source: The Guardian
Italy's Five Star Movement blamed for surge in measles cases
Italian health official makes accusation against populist party,
which proposed anti-vaccination law in 2015
Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Thursday 23 March 2017 06.10 GMT
An Italian health official has blamed an alarming rise in measles cases on the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which has campaigned on an anti-vaccination platform and has repeated discredited links between vaccinations and autism.
According to the health ministry, more than 700 cases of the highly contagious disease have been registered so far in 2017, compared with 220 for the same period last year and 844 in the whole of 2016.
The surge in the number of cases follows a drop in the proportion of two-year-olds given vaccinations from 88% in 2013 to 86% in 2014 and 85.3% in 2015 – well below the 95% threshold advised by the World Health Organisation.
In 2015, the M5S proposed a law against vaccinations because of “the link between vaccinations and specific illnesses such as leukaemia, poisoning, inflammation, immunodepression, inheritable genetic mutations, cancer, autism and allergies”.
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Italian health official makes accusation against populist party,
which proposed anti-vaccination law in 2015
Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Thursday 23 March 2017 06.10 GMT
An Italian health official has blamed an alarming rise in measles cases on the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which has campaigned on an anti-vaccination platform and has repeated discredited links between vaccinations and autism.
According to the health ministry, more than 700 cases of the highly contagious disease have been registered so far in 2017, compared with 220 for the same period last year and 844 in the whole of 2016.
The surge in the number of cases follows a drop in the proportion of two-year-olds given vaccinations from 88% in 2013 to 86% in 2014 and 85.3% in 2015 – well below the 95% threshold advised by the World Health Organisation.
In 2015, the M5S proposed a law against vaccinations because of “the link between vaccinations and specific illnesses such as leukaemia, poisoning, inflammation, immunodepression, inheritable genetic mutations, cancer, autism and allergies”.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/23/italys-five-star-movement-blamed-for-surge-in-measles-cases
