Vaccines and medicines, high on the authorities’ agenda

The vaccine crisis continues in Romania, a country that also has to deal with an ongoing measles epidemic, the biggest one in recent years

Mihai Pelin, 14.07.2017, 13:10

The number of immunized children in Romania has decreased constantly, year on year. This is the case for all types of vaccines included in the national vaccination programme, which puts the vaccination rate in Romania below the 95% safety limit set by the World Health Organization.

Doctors recommend the introduction of compulsory vaccination, which is, in their opinion, the only way of preventing the emergence of some very serious diseases. Nevertheless, a significant number of parents refuse to vaccinate their children for fear of side effects.

At the last government meeting, Romanian PM Mihai Tudose said that 180 thousand children are not immunized against measles and another 80 thousand against polio. For this reason, the PM asked the Health Minister Florian Bodog to initiate an extensive information campaign on this matter, in order to make Romanians understand how important it is to vaccinate their children.

Moreover, Prime Minister Tudose says that Romania must have a vaccine factory and asked the Health Minister to come up with a plan so that the Cantacuzino Institute, which has more than 90 years of experience in the field, becomes functional. Romania needs a vaccination law to enter a state of normality in this respect, expert say, and debates on the issue have already started.

The new project stipulates that parents will not be sanctioned if they refuse to immunize their children but they cannot enroll them with the kindergarten and school unless they provide documents that prove that their kids have been immunized with all compulsory vaccines. To make things even more difficult, Romania is confronted with the biggest measles epidemic in recent years. 31 persons have died and 7,500 have become sick since September last year when the epidemic broke out.

The World Health Organisation has said this epidemic is an unacceptable tragedy and has confirmed that the measles outbreak continues to spread in Europe, where 35 people died in the past 12 months. The most recent victim is a 6 year old from Italy, but victims have also been reported in Germany and Portugal.

Another sensitive issue in Romania lately has been the risk of 2,300 medicines disappearing from the Romanian market because of an increase in the tax on turnover for producers in the field.

According to the Association of Generic Medicines Producers in Romania, a differentiated calculation of the tax this year is urgent, as well as its complete removal for generic medicines as of 2018. The Health Ministry and the National Health Insurance House have already started talks on this issue with representatives of the pharmaceutical companies, in an attempt to come up with a new mechanism for this tax, which can be accepted by all parties and which observes the principles of transparency, predictability and sustainability in the long run.