OREANDA-NEWS. The group of epidemiologists published an open letter in the Journal of Health Communication in which they called on the United Nations and the governments of all countries to begin a systematic struggle against the anti-vaccination movement and the disinformation about the effects of vaccination.

The scientists mentioned that the World Health Organization had called the fear of vaccines one of the main public health problems, and this problem was artificial. The physicians are going to fight with pseudo-scientific information until traditional public confidence in vaccinations is restored, Dr. Scott Ratzan said.

At the end of the XX century, the British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who later became the father of the anti-vaccination movement, published an article in The Lancet magazine where he stated that the vaccine against measles, parotitis and rubella contributed to the development of autism and intestinal inflammatory diseases. This publication attracted attention of media, the matter was widely publicized and became not only a reason for disputes between scientists, but also a reason for the appearance of a movement of people who deny the effectiveness of vaccinations. The situation has not changed to nowadays, and in some countries, including Russia, outbreaks of measles and other diseases have begun to arise, and it was connected with the spread of these ideas.

So, Dr. Ratzan and many other leading epidemiologists of the world propose to equate pseudo-scientific claims distributed by anti-vaccination organizations with unfair advertising, public threats, fake news, and other inadequate information, which is limited or prohibited by law for spreading. The experts also called on officials and politicians to adopt the laws that would make vaccination mandatory for all children. In addition, they suggested giving to such medical services the same status as the activities of the police, sanitary-epidemiological and fire services have.