The importance of vaccines: how to overcome misinformation and fear

In 2015, Italy was reprimanded by the World Health Organisation for the decrease in vaccination rates. Notwithstanding the abundance of dissemination and fact-checking activities on the matter, fear, distrust and disinformation with regard to vaccines are still present in our country, not to mention ‘real hoaxes’. Still, it is crucial to maintain high vaccination rates in order to preserve the group immunities, which protects also those who did not receive vaccinations. In Il vaccino non è un'opinione (Vaccines are not an opinon, Mondadori 2016) and in Chi ha paura dei vaccini? (Who’s afraid of vaccines?, Codice Edizioni, 2016), Roberto Burioni and Andrea Grignolio tackle both the reasons – historical and cultural – of those opposing vaccines, and the need to overcome then with a correct and comprehensible dissemination work, for guaranteeing the right to health.