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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Health and Sanitation |
|---|---|
| located: | Russia |
| editor: | Igor Serebryany |
Children whose parents failed to vaccinate them would be denied admission to public schools and pre-school facilities, a bill introduced jointly by Russia's Senate (Federation Council) and federal government envisages.
The bill has been highly controversial and heavily depends on its exact wording, a lawyer in the Center of Medical Law Andrei Karpenko stresses. "From the first approach, the bill contradicts the laws About Healthcare, About Education and some others. Not to create a conflict of laws, the lawmakers have to declare null and void many clauses of those laws," he says.
Karpenko reminds that many countries practice preconditioning of some social benefits with mandatory vaccination. On the other hand, parents who deny vaccination to their children could be accused of abusing parental rights.
"Under Russian Civil Code, denial to vaccinate a child is an abuse of parental rights because that violates a child's right to healthcare - unless there are some medical counter-indications. Parental reluctance to vaccinate their children just because they belong to an 'anti-vaxxers faith' is not a sufficient reason," he underlines. "If that bill becomes a law, it will re-shape the entire civil-legal continuum and create a completely new legal, or rather illegal, reality".
Demands for mandatory vaccination exist in Russia at present but since they are not supported by the written law, they could be easily bypassed by bribing school principals, says Ekaterina, a mother from St-Petersburg. "There are many parents I personally know who refuse to vaccinate their children. Well, I admit our fears could be baseless, still I know several families whose children were diagnosed with autism three years upon vaccination at birth," she says.
Ekaterina admits that "many medical doctors, as well as school teachers, share the belief that vaccination is harmful to children so they put a blind eye on the absence of a vaccination certificate or agree to accept the forged ones."
"If the parents will face a choice between mandatory vaccination and schooling, many will switch to the remote education or home schooling. The lockdown gave all of us the experience of distant learning and most of us would prefer it, because children often contract flu while in classrooms or on their way to schools," Ekaterina says.
Professor in the Moscow Medical Academy Pavel Vorobyov sides with the anti-vaxxers adherers, though admitting they belong to the same domain with those believing in flat Earth or UFOs.
"This contradicts medical ethics and common sense to force even such freakish people – or their children – into vaccination rooms. This is utterly unacceptable to make access to any social guarantees like education dependent on any medical requirements. I don't understand how such a law could be passed, because it opens floodgates to more inhumane "laws" - for example, about blood donations as a precondition to some social benefits," he anticipates.
Vorobyev stresses that traditional medicine lacks any scientific proof that vaccination actually protects from flu, including its COVID-19 form.
"Any alien biological agents cause an allergic response, kidney failures and other complications. By introducing the mandatory vaccination, the lawmakers accept responsibility for such negative consequences. Besides, the bill contradicts the clause of the law About Healthcare that any medical treatment and manipulation could be undertaken only with a person's written consent", the professor points out.
Image by enriquelopezgarre
