A group of parents expressed their disagreement with the mandatory vaccination of children. According to them, the law must be amended because in the current form it deprives the parents of the right to choose, while the children are deprived of the right to attend education institutions, IPN reports.
Mother of three Tatiana Mahalachi said that she has to vaccinate her children or else they are not accepted into education establishments. “The children are healthy and I see no reasons for not enrolling them to schools and kindergartens,” she stated.
According to former director of the Mother and Child Center Ion Iliciuc, the parents must not be deprived of the right to choose. “The vaccines are necessary in epidemiological conditions. But if the child is healthy, even if he is not vaccinated, he can go to kindergarten or school without problems. Parents’ rights cannot be violated in a democratic state,” said the professor, stressing that the authorities should amend the law and should work out immunization strategies that would exclude the risk factors.
Psychologist Angela Nicolaou said that no matter how good the vaccines are, the parents should have the right to choose. “We want our children to attend the school or kindergarten without being verbally aggressed because they are not vaccinated,” she said, adding that, as a parent, she wasn’t informed about the immunization procedure and the risk of vaccines.
In a news conference earlier, Stela Gheorghita, deputy head of the National Public Health Center, also recognized the necessity of more exhaustively informing the parents about the vaccines. According to her, the family doctors are responsible for this, but they often avoid discussing this issue with the parents. As a result, many parents have wrong opinions.
Paragraph 6, article 52 of the Law on State Supervision of Public Health says that the children are admitted to education and recreational institutions after they are vaccinated regularly for prophylactic purposes. The law was adopted in February 2009.
