One in 4 Greeks thinks that vaccines are not safe! In fact, this percentage (25%) is more than double the global average (12%). Overall, the European Union has the greatest lack of confidence and the strongest skepticism about vaccines (15.8%), while Southeast Asia (4.4%) and Africa (7.4%) have the least lack of confidence.
According to scientists, fears about vaccines are a serious public health problem, as they “slow down” many parents to vaccinate their children or to vaccinate themselves, which leads to a resurgence of diseases such as measles and meningitis.
The above data comes from a new international scientific study, published in the medical journal “EbioMedicine”, led by researchers from the School of Health & Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London. Scientists – with the help of the international research organization WIN / Gallup International – sampled the views of nearly 66,000 people in 67 countries on whether vaccines are safe, important, effective and compatible with their religious beliefs.
This is the largest research ever conducted in the world on people’s perceptions of vaccines. According to the study, among European countries, France is the most suspicious of vaccines (41% of French people disagree that vaccines are safe).
This high rate is attributed to doubts over the last two decades about the possible side effects of vaccines, mainly for hepatitis B and the human papillomavirus HPV. The lack of confidence in Greece (25%) is the same as in Japan and slightly lower than in Russia (28%). At the other end of the spectrum, only 1% of people in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Argentina consider vaccines unsafe.
In terms of the importance of vaccines, in addition to their safety, again the European Union has the largest percentage of people who do not consider vaccines important (7.7%), compared to 2.3% in Southeast Asia, 3.5% in Middle East and 3.5% in Africa.
The countries with the greatest decline in the importance of vaccines are Russia (16% of the population) and Italy (15%), while on the other hand less than 1% of the population in Bangladesh, Iran, Ecuador, the Philippines and Argentina considers vaccines irrelevant.
SOURCE: http://www.healthview.gr
