Ministry of Health should give up charging a prescription to vaccinate children

The recommendations to vaccinate children will be released in a document this Wednesday (5). Wanted, the Ministry of Health did not confirm the decision, which was obtained by leaf with government officials who follow the discussions closely.

“We had 99,309 people who participated in this short period of time in which the document was for public consultation, most of which agreed with the non-compulsory nature of vaccination and the prioritization of children with comorbidities. Most were against the mandatory nature of medical prescriptions. in the act of vaccination,” said Rosana Leite de Melo, extraordinary secretary for Covid-19 at the Ministry of Health, at the public hearing on Tuesday.

Entities that spoke about the matter at the hearing were also against the requirement of a medical prescription. Among them are Conass (National Council of Health Secretaries), Conasems (National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries), CFM (Federal Council of Medicine) and SBI (Brazilian Society of Infectology).

​Nésio Fernandes, representative of Conass, reiterated the position of the council. He stated that 20 states, which comprise more than 80% of the population, have already published norms on the subject and prescriptions will not be required.

He also stressed that vaccines against Covid-19 are not experimental and have passed through the main regulatory agencies.

“In a context of a vaccine-preventable disease pandemic, in which we already have a vaccine available, any position that encourages vaccine hesitation must be explicitly opposed because it reduces the health system’s capacity to promote health and reduce diseases,” he said.

Donizetti Dimer Giamberardino Filho, vice president of CFM, stated that medical prescriptions can become a form of restriction of access to the vaccine. In addition, he said he believed it was inappropriate to involve a medical professional in a class action.

“There is no legal provision in the legislation about a prescription. In this sense, we understand that placing a prescription for the doctor is to share a responsibility with the doctor, who is an individual, and this responsibility belongs to the Ministry of Health through an action collective,” said Filho.

By March, the Ministry of Health should receive at least 20 million pediatric doses from Pfizer against Covid-19, enough to immunize about half of the population of children aged 5 to 11 years.

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, said this Monday (3) that the doses should be distributed to the states in the second half of January, but he did not confirm the volume.