Perhaps there are parents who have not stopped to think about this issue because it is assumed that vaccines "touch" at the ages imposed by the vaccination calendar. But, Is it mandatory to vaccinate children?
I know cases of parents who have decided not to vaccinate their children or not to do so at the ages at which it "touches", but later. In these cases, can parents be forced to vaccinate them?
I was surprised by a story that has just been made public in Argentina about an unprecedented resolution in the country, which forces a marriage that practices Ayurveda holistic discipline to vaccinate their newborn baby “within the peremptory period of two days under warning to proceed to vaccination compulsively and without prejudice to using public force ”.
From the legal point of view, in Spain there is no express obligation to vaccinate children.
Organic Law 3/86 in its second article dictates that “The authorities may take any type of measures to preserve public health, with the only requirement that there are rational indications that it is in danger. Any measures are allowed in cases of epidemics or borderline situations ”. Although it does not explicitly refer to vaccines, we can deduce that in extreme cases such as epidemics it would be worth the obligation.
However, vaccination of the child is strongly recommended from the health and educational field, up to almost imposed.
For example, when a baby is born they don't usually ask parents "Do you want your child to receive such a vaccine?". Upon birth, the baby is given his first vaccine (hepatitis B, if I'm not mistaken) and they bring it to the room and vaccinated without any questions. I imagine that if you do not want it you will have to make it clear in advance.
Later, in the periodic medical checks nobody tells us “Do you want to vaccinate it?", if not "have to vaccinate“.
Likewise, when we target a child in the nursery or at school, one of the papers that must be presented is the calendar of vaccinations per day (at least so it has been in my case).
I am not proclaiming free vaccination or non-vaccination. In fact, I am in favor of vaccination (my daughters have all their vaccines up to date) even having had a childhood illness because of a vaccine virus.
But as a result of the news I was commenting on, I started to reflect on the obligation to vaccinate and the right not to vaccinate children.
I would like to know what you think about it. Do parents have the right not to vaccinate their children? Are these parents irresponsible? Should vaccines be mandatory?
