The French and vaccines, not really a love story… Indeed, according to a large-scale international survey conducted by researchers from the Vaccine Confidence Project (Projet Confiance dans les Vaccins en VF) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, four out of ten French people believe that vaccines are not safe. Which makes us the most skeptical in the world!
To arrive at this statistic, the researchers interviewed more than 65,000 people in 67 countries between September and December 2015, to whom they asked 4 questions about vaccines in general (about the importance of vaccinating children, confidence in vaccines, vaccine effectiveness and compatibility with religious beliefs). So verdict? Well, seven of the ten countries with the most widespread vaccine safety skepticism are on the European continent. France is thus in the lead (41%, i.e. more than three times the world average) followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (36%), Russia (28%), Mongolia (27%) then Greece ( 25%, tied with Japan and Ukraine), Armenia (21%) and Slovenia (22%), according to results published Friday by the journal EBioMedicine. Also in France, 17% of respondents doubt the effectiveness of vaccines and for more than one in ten (12%) childhood vaccines are not important.
According to the authors of the study, the negative attitudes observed in France "could result from the controversies over the last two decades" on the adverse effects of the vaccine against hepatitis B and vaccines (Gardasil, Cervarix) against infections due to papillomavirus (HPV), which causes genital cancers, or on the vaccine against pandemic influenza A (H1N1) in 2009. The researchers also mention the hesitations of a large proportion of general practitioners as to the usefulness of certain vaccine. Finally, religion would also be an obstacle to vaccination, since according to the study, more than 10% of French people would be against vaccination because of their religious beliefs (the Vatican had expressed concerns about the composition of the vaccine against rubella cultured on a cell line of aborted fetuses, concluding however that as long as there was no alternative choice, it was acceptable for Catholics to use the existing vaccine).
With that, sting or sting more, we let you decide...
