Immunologists want measles, whooping cough vaccine program for older adults
The rise of whooping cough and measles infections has a lot of attention focused on vaccinating young children. But older adults are also very vulnerable. Immunologists, therefore, advocate for a national vaccination program for the elderly, EenVandaag reports.
Earlier this week, the RIVM reported that there were 7,187 whooping cough infections in the Netherlands in the first four months of this year. It also reported 74 measles diagnoses. These diseases are highly infectious and can be extremely dangerous for young children and the elderly.
“The immune system decreases due to aging, which makes the elderly vulnerable,” Debbie van Baarle, an immunologist at the RIVM and professor of Immunology of Vaccinations at the University of Groningen, told the program. “And because the elderly are more vulnerable to infectious diseases, they need extra support to protect them. That can be done through vaccination.”
Dimitri Diavatopoulos, an immunologist at Radboudumc, is also in favor of vaccination for older adults. “If you can protect the elderly by offering a vaccine, then I think it will have a lot of direct health benefits for those people because the burden of disease will be reduced among this group.”
Many elderly people were vaccinated against whooping cough as children. But bacteria change and it is unlikely that a vaccination decades ago will still offer sufficient protection. Several countries, including Austria and Australia, offer the elderly a repeat vaccination every 10 years. Van Baarle thinks that’s a good start for the Netherlands.
But the two immunologists would prefer a full vaccination program for the elderly, covering measles, whooping cough, flu, shingles, pneumococcal disease, and the RS virus. “I am certainly in favor of that. I think that the risk of infectious diseases does not stop at the age of 18,” Van Baarle said. “We should actually work towards a life-course vaccination, where you can use multiple vaccines over your entire life so that everyone is optimally protected.”
A national vaccination program would also simplify things, Diavatopoulos said. Older adults currently go to the GP for some vaccines and the GGD for others. “It is too fragmented. I am in favor of a vaccination program for the elderly because it can be much better organized.” Then, people can go to one place to get all the vaccines they need.
The Ministry of Public Health, Welfare, and Sports told EenVandaag that the RIVM recently carried out an implementation test into a vaccination facility for adults at the GGD municipal health services. “It is in the final stages of completion. Parliament will be informed further about this in the short term,” the Ministry said.
