Italy's struck-off anti-vax medics eye return as senate vote nears

The measure cleared the lower house in October and now sits with the senate, where a vote is scheduled for January. It would let healthcare workers kicked off professional registers during the pandemic for serious violations tied to anti-vaccination beliefs — promoting treatments with no scientific basis, for instance — apply to come back. Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy is driving it, with firm backing from coalition partner the League. The number of medics involved is believed to be tiny; the alarm is about what the move signals.

The split runs through Italian families. Antonio Cremasco caught Covid at a dinner party on 6 March 2020, days before Italy became the first European country to enter nationwide lockdown, and spent 20 days in intensive care plus 20 more in a hospital ward. Now 76 and recently jabbed against Covid and winter flu, he credits the vaccine with saving him again — “All those who had been in intensive care with me died,” he said. He still can't convince his vaccine-sceptic son, a father of two, and he and his wife stay wary about having unvaccinated grandchildren in their home whenever the children are ill.

Experts' concern isn't headcount. Nearly one in two Italian adults is hesitant about vaccination, according to a University of Turin study published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe in February. It sampled 50,000 adults and found the ambivalence was driven more by misinformation and thin institutional trust than by fears over vaccine safety. “Political communication and the lack of trust among Italians in institutions carry a significant weight,” said Roberta Siliquini, who heads the university's school of hygiene and preventive medicine and led the research. “There really is a disinformation campaign in this sense – and those who want to disinform are very good at communicating.”

The fallout is already measurable. Health ministry figures show 472 measles infections in the first five months of this year, up from 322 in the same period last year, with more than half of cases in young adults. Flu vaccine take-up among the over-65s has slipped to 49.81% so far this season — the first time it has dropped below 50% since the winter of 2014-15. In August, a four-year-old in Palermo, Sicily, died of diphtheria; her parents reportedly told doctors they had not vaccinated her because her cousin was autistic and they blamed vaccines. There is no evidence of any link between autism and vaccines.

Politics keeps feeding it. On 28 October, the day after the lower house vote, League politician Claudio Borghi drew fire for hosting an anti-vaccine seminar in the senate. Later that day, President Sergio Mattarella used a cancer research gathering to condemn the spread of anti-vax messages, warning against “irrational beliefs” and “destructive fake news”. Borghi has pushed to revise a 2017 law that raised mandatory childhood vaccinations from four to 10, arguing he isn't anti-vaccine but that mandates “lead to resistance”. He told the Guardian the reinstatement plan aims “to foster reconciliation after all these years”: “In our view, nobody should lose their job because of a personal belief.”