The Constitutional Council ruled Friday that the vaccination of a child should remain mandatory. This decision was eagerly awaited as a growing number of French question its usefulness , to the chagrin of health authorities. This requirement concerns three vaccines and found to comply “with the constitutional requirement of health protection.” The Sages particularly noted “that by imposing these vaccination requirements, the legislature intended to fight against three very serious and contagious or not susceptible of being eradicated.” They point out that “the legislature” took the precaution of clarifying that “each vaccination requirements only necessary with the reservation of a recognized medical cons-indication.”
In France, only the DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and poliomyelitis) is mandated by the Code of Public Health and subtracting it is repressed by the Code Criminal .
In its decision, the Constitutional Council also felt that it was “open to Parliament to define a vaccination policy to protect health individual and collective. ” He also considered that it was not for him “to question, given the knowledge and techniques, arrangements, or to determine whether the health protection objective (…) could have been achieved in other ways, since the methods used by law are not manifestly inappropriate to the objective. “
The Council had before it a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) by the lawyer of a couple, Mark and Larère Samia, who refused to vaccinate her two children, arguing that the vaccines available in the market are too risky and protect against diseases that n longer exist in France, despite some cases of tetanus reported each year.
40% parents wary vis-à-vis vaccines
But the couple is now far from alone in its approach, the movement of “anti-vaccine” is being developed in recent years in France, mainly thanks to internet relays and networks social. Mistrust of the population to vaccines in general has increased from 10% in 2005 to 40% in 2010, according to the National Institute for Prevention and Health Education (INPE).
France is also the last industrialized country with Italy to further impose certain vaccines (DTP), which particularly affect access of children to nurseries and schools.
This sensitive issue contrasts the right to health, registered in the preamble to the Constitution and the Penal Code and the Code of Public Health. The right to health is also the right not to be vaccinated, according to counsel the couple Larère.
At the hearing before the Constitutional Council on March 10, Me Ludot recalled the three diseases covered by the DTP vaccine had disappeared from France and Europe. Citing studies, it also ensured that they had “more confidence that the three diseases (had) been eradicated by vaccination campaign.”
“The expectation of clarification “
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers, however, that thanks to a massive vaccination campaign, particularly in India, the number of polio cases worldwide has increased from 350,000 in 1988 to 416 in 2013. According to a study by the OECD 2011, almost 100% of children were vaccinated against diphtheria and tetanus in eight countries of the European Union, including France.
The lawyer also cited cases of complications from vaccination, put forward by opponents of mandatory or recommended injections (paralysis, polyneuritis). Therefore, we must “make parents their freedom” and “make immunization except” in case of recurrence or emergence of a virus, he argued, citing the case of Ebola. “I am confident”, said after the hearing Marc Larère, which expects the Constitutional Council a “clarification”.
Touraine recalls the “fundamental” nature of vaccination
The day of Corrections hearing, the Health Minister Marisol Touraine was recalled character “absolutely fundamental” vaccine “to prevent disease.” “There is a movement that concerns me in France mistrust, distrust even vis-à-vis vaccines (…) The freedom ends where public health and the safety of the general population “she added. In early September, the High Council of Public Health, which advises the Ministry, said that maintaining or not “mandatory vaccination in the general population” fell “from a societal choice deserves a debate that health authorities must to organize. “
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