While Italy joins the European countries that have started vaccination against monkeypox, the uncoordinated and scattered vaccination campaigns cause complaints.
There are news in the European press that a kind of “health tourism” has started in countries with a large number of Vaccines And Vaccinated Foreigners.
Finally, Monkeypox vaccination was started yesterday in Italy. The vaccination campaign was limited to the so-called “high-risk” categories, due to the low number of doses of 4,200 in the first phase.
According to the data released last week in Italy, 505 cases were detected, of which only 4 were women. The median age of the patients was also 37 years.
The first vaccination in the country was started in the capital city of Rome. In the coming days, vaccination will also be launched in the regions of Lombardia, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, where cases are most common.
VACCINE TOURISM CRITICISM
On the other hand, activists working in the field of sexual health in Italy state that there are people trying to get vaccinated by going to other countries because the vaccination campaign is slow and insufficient.
In recent days, there has been similar news about “vaccine tourism” in the European press. In a report published in the Financial Times yesterday, “European men are struggling to access monkeypox vaccines. “Some people travel abroad to get vaccinated due to severe vaccine shortages and increasing cases.”
The Politico website, which focuses on European news, also featured a news titled “People are trying to protect against disease and stigma, vaccine tourism is back”.
THEY ARE TRAVELING TO GET
vaccinated In both news stories, there were interviews with people who traveled to countries where there is no or insufficient vaccination in Europe and to countries with a higher number of vaccinations, such as France.
Speaking to the Financial Times, a person told that he traveled to Paris due to the lack of vaccination in Switzerland.
Speaking to Politico, 34-year-old Paulo from Portugal said that there is no monkeypox vaccine in his country, so he decided to go to Lille, France.
“This city has turned into an unexpected place of cross because it also vaccinates foreigners,” the news said.
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, decided to receive approximately 164,000 doses of vaccine against monkeypox. Most of the Bavarian Nordic vaccines that the EU buys are sent to member states where the number of cases is high.
However, there are also those who make individual purchases within EU countries or those who activate the already existing smallpox vaccine stocks.
The use of different practices in different European countries, the prioritization of different categories of vaccines and the lack of coordination have led to criticism that governments have forced citizens to find their own solutions.
The World Health Organization also criticized that countries compete with each other to reach the vaccine instead of cooperating.