Dr Alessandro Diana is a paediatrician specialised in vaccination and heads the Paediatrics Department at Clinique des Grangettes, a well-known private clinic in Geneva. Business Mir interviewed Dr. Diana on Swiss vaccination policies and other topics.
Is it true that vaccination is not mandatory for children in Switzerland? It’s true, very few vaccinations are mandatory in Switzerland. The Federal Office of Public Health annually publishes lists of recommended basic vaccines and the percentage of children that are vaccinated against basic diseases remains very high, at around 95%*.
For over 30 years now, some parties have claimed that vaccination can have horrible side effects, whereas doctors and pharmaceutical companies insist that there is no danger at all in their vaccines. Who is right? No survey to date has convincingly proved the dangers of vaccination. For example, the results of an in-depth survey based on data gathered from tens of thousands of cases and published in the late 1990s finally proved that there is no association between the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine (HBV) and multiple sclerosis (MS) in adults.
On the other hand, there is no zero risk factor in vaccination, but the same can be said for anything in medicine.
However, skills accumulated in the field of vaccination over the past 50 years have substantially increased our knowledge of the subject. Although I recommend the vaccinations suggested by the Federal Office of Public Health, I would never deny medical care to anyone who refuses to be vaccinated. I believe that a doctor must respect the opinion of his or her patients.
This moderate attitude to practicing medicine surely has its detractors… That’s a fact. I often meet people who become desperate unless I give them a heap of prescriptions. Many people are convinced that you cannot get well without strong medicines or an operation.
Personally, I am trying to work in accordance with the “Premium non nocere” or “First do no harm” principle. I won’t write prescriptions and I never suggest operating unless I am confident that it cannot be avoided. This is especially true for children – doctor’s visits already frighten children, it’s important to make them no more stressful than necessary.
I am also open to alternative medicine such as phytotherapy and osteopathy because herbal medicine is based on the use of plants and plant extracts.
I am not unique in this respect; modern medicine is leaning towards developing closer cooperation and mutual understanding between doctors and patients, which the British describe as “patient empowerment”.
Doctors today are no longer frightening know-it-alls in white coats, and patients have gone from being cowering individuals to well informed citizens who rightfully demand quality treatment. One should be glad that things have evolved in this manner.
Should we fear swine flu? Based on what has happened in the Southern Hemisphere – where winter has ended and swine flu appeared first – we can say that the H1N1 virus is less virulent and deadly than we had initially feared. But it has remained highly contagious.
The overwhelming majority of otherwise healthy individuals who catch swine flu, regardless of their age, will not be able to distinguish its symptoms from an ordinary seasonal influenza. But a doctor must be consulted if breathing becomes difficult because the consequences can be dramatic, and even deadly.
As for vaccination, we recommend it only to medical personnel and people in highrisk groups who suffer from other serious diseases.
* The basic «cocktail» includes vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV), cervical cancer, chicken pox, tetanus and diphtheria vaccine (DTP, DTaP or DT), whooping cough, poliomyelitis, haemophilus influenzae, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and hepatitis B.
