Vaccines save lives and should be used without any fear or prejudice.

Having been a pediatrician for more than 40 years, I am totally convinced that vaccines save lives. Personally, during my 40 year experience, I have never seen any case of poliomyelitis, but as a young resident I saw cases of diphtheria, neonatal tetanus and pertussis that have cost children lives. All those have disappeared since the mid-1970s. However, in 1998 we had endemic meningococcal meningitis C in Greece. 280 persons became ill, among which 35 died.

Given this incident and in my capacity as President of the Hellenic (Greek) National Immunization Committee, I proposed that the meningitis vaccine should be included in routine vaccination. Greece is the second country worldwide (after United Kingdom), to include this vaccine in routine vaccination and this resulted into zero meningitis C outbreaks.

Unfortunately, in 2009 the anti-vaccination lobby had also appeared in Greece, simultaneously with the flu pandemic. Despite this, the continuous updating of the public by the Hellenic Pediatric Society (of which I have had the honor to be the President for the last 15 years) has made it possible to achieve high vaccination coverage and the elimination of Measles and Rubella, as in many European Countries.

In my personal opinion, the anti-vaccination lobby is mainly due to a) the inadequate education of health professionals (medical students, nurses, midwives and doctors), b) the media and c) vaccines’ cost. In Greece all vaccines are provided free of charge and have been included in the National Immunization Program.

The main reasons that lead to non-vaccination are a) the variety of vaccines and b) the side-effects. None of these above mentioned reasons have a reasonable ground. Until 1993 the whole-cell pertussis vaccine was used, containing approximately 3,000 antigens, which resulted into side-effects. Today the pertussis vaccine used contains only 3-5 antigens. If we use all vaccines that currently exist, we will not exceed the 75 antigens, versus 4.000 antigens that used to exist until 1993.

Vaccines are effective and contain isolated antigens which have been tested in a population of millions of people.Vaccines save lives and should be used without any fear or prejudice.

Prof. Andreas Konstantopoulos,

President of the Hellenic Pediatric Society (HPS)

President of the International Pediatric Association (IPA)