"I had all the vaccines as a child"

With this sentence, the vaccination issue is often dismissed as if to clear one's conscience to return to what is commonly considered "normal", but have you ever realized the number of doses offered to a child born in 1980 and one born in 2023?

Below you can see the vaccination offer in the 0-18 age group in 1980 compared to that offered today with the new National Vaccine Plan 2023-2025.⁽¹⁾

A dive into the 80s

Let's try to empathize: we are new mothers or fathers and we are living in the fantastic 1980s. At your child's first two-month visit, the pediatrician will offer you two vaccines, which are mandatory: Diphtheria-Tetanus and anti-polio oral Sabin. This formula, an inoculum and an oral vaccine, will have to be repeated three more times: at 4 months, around one year of age and finally between 5 and 7 years.
With these unique vaccines you are considered "good parents": 3 inoculations and 4 oral administrations for a total of 10 doses from 0 to 7 years and so it was until 1992 when the Minister of Health, Francesco De Lorenzo, after pocketing a bribe of 600 million lire from Glaxo, also made the anti-hepatitis B vaccine mandatory... but that's another chapter.

Also in 1980, if you wanted to go beyond the mandatory vaccines, you had few options available to you: upon reaching the age of one you could have a single dose of vaccine administered against measles, a monovalent vaccine which has now disappeared from the market, and for girls a vaccine against Rubella which was often administered at school, with the consent of the parents, in the fifth year of primary school or in the first year of the secondary cycle (fifth grade or sixth grade).

Warning: having contracted the disease naturally made you exempt from vaccination for both Measles and Rubella, therefore we are hypothesizing complete vaccination prophylaxis for a child born in 1980 and who has not contracted any exanthematous disease.

Now we come to those born in 2023 

With the new National Vaccine Plan 2023-2025 we start with Hepatitis B at birth for some particular categories of children and start immediately afterwards with the hexavalent (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Poliomyelitis, Haemophilus influenzae B and Hepatitis B) by the age of 60 days of life. You will have to repeat it two more times, once at 4 months and once at 10 months and in co-administration with the Pneumococcal vaccine, always 3 total doses spaced as above. Free of charge and together with the Pneumococcus, the vaccine against Meningococcus B is often co-administered, always 3 doses and always within 10 months of life, to which is added the oral vaccine against Rotavirus to be given in 2 or 3 vaccinations (depending on the product chosen if 2 or 3).

From 12 months there is the mandatory quadrivalent MPRV (Measles-Rubella-Mumps-Varicella) and since they are gentle they also add the ACWY Meningococcal vaccine. 

In the midst of this incessant succession, from the sixth month of life, we start with the flu vaccination and this is recommended as annual therefore it is continued for life.

From the age of 5 you will be offered Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis and Poliomyelitis and the Local Health Authority decides whether to make them separate or combined, i.e. DTP+Polio or DTP with Polio separated in a single vaccine. Obviously there is the second booster of the MMRV vaccine and finally we stop for a little while, unless we get the annual flu shot.

From the age of 12 we start with the vaccine against the Papilloma Virus but be careful, if you start correctly it is only 2 doses, if it is delayed it is 3 doses to which the Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough and Poliomyelitis booster is added. Also in this phase, the recalls of Meningococcus ACWY and Meningococcus B end.

A child born in 1980, from 0 to 18 years he received 14 doses in 9 or 10 vaccinations and he was considered one of the super vaccinated ones.  

A child born in 2023, from 0 to 18 years he will give at least 60 doses in 37 vaccinations and we are excluding anomalous epidemic situations, see Covid19, and the future vaccines they will implement.

Associations like Corvelva were born in the 90s in response to the increase in vaccination obligations, the systematic underestimation of adverse reactions and the constant denial of vaccine damage by both the medical profession and the State. With the increase in the vaccination schedule offered to children, these three basic problems that we have been fighting for years have increased exponentially, arriving in our opinion at an unsustainable situation.
To give you an example: if in 2006 the Morupar vaccine (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) was withdrawn from the market⁽²⁾ after many reported adverse reactions (officially 5 but it was the tip of the iceberg) today this phenomenon is almost impossible.
And again, if until the end of the 90s and in the first decade of the 2000s, the law for compensation for vaccine damage was something complicated but possible to achieve, today it is a dead letter.