(Oct 2, 2018 01:57 AM)C C Wrote: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anti-vaxxers-italy-vaccine-measles-epidemic-europe-us-vaccination-global-health-security-agenda-a8560021.html

EXCERPT: As the new school year has begun in Italy, parents no longer have to prove their children have been immunised – highlighting a clash of priorities, stoked by the new populist government.

In 2014, the Global Health Security Agenda had tapped Italy to lead world vaccination strategies. But just four years later, the country has instead become the testing ground for anti-vaxxers, a movement growing across Europe and the US, and whose ideologies often share space on the political landscape with populist parties. "Ten obligatory vaccinations are useless and in many cases dangerous, if not harmful,” Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini said, in the run up to the general election in March.

The measles epidemic in Europe as a whole is now at an eight-year high.

Mr Salvini, from the League party, and also the country’s deputy prime minister, shares something in common with other leading populists such as his European ally Marine Le Pen and US president Donald Trump. As part of their anti-establishment views, they are also choosing to target science. The League and it’s coalition partner, the Five Star Movement, both stood with anti-vaxxer groups during the electoral campaign, promising to oppose the pre-existing law that made vaccines mandatory.

Soon after forming a government, the new health minister Giulia Grillo lifted the existing requirements by allowing parents to self-certify that their children have had the compulsory vaccinations, hitherto necessary for school admission. But the parliament then said the requirement to provide proof of vaccinations would just be postponed until the 2019-2020 school year.

On one side, anti-vaxxers now accuse the League and the Five Star Movement of betrayal. And on the other, confusion and legal uncertainty about compulsory vaccination has made the start of a new year much more difficult for vulnerable children, such as those with suppressed immune systems....

MORE: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anti-vaxxers-italy-vaccine-measles-epidemic-europe-us-vaccination-global-health-security-agenda-a8560021.html

Quote:stoked by the new populist government

Quote:Populists
typically present "the elite" as comprising the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment, all of which are depicted as a homogenous entity and accused of placing the interests of other groups—such as foreign countries or immigrants—above the interests of "the people".
Populism - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism