Starting today, the EFN will launch a new social media campaign fostering the roles and competencies of healthcare professionals in vaccination: administering it to patients/citizens and raising awareness on their safety and effectiveness. Vaccination continues to be the safest and effective public health measure that there is.
Despite the demonstrated benefits of many kinds of vaccination, it remains a controversial issue largely due to misinformation, restricted access, health illiteracy and cost. Alarmingly, the findings of the EU statistical Report ‘Europeans’ attitudes towards vaccination’ and the EU Report ‘State of vaccine confidence in the EU 2018’, show that Europe is the region with the lowest confidence in vaccination in the world and that a very significant number of Europeans do not have the correct information on vaccination.
The major challenge for national immunization systems across Europe is to ensure Europeans have the correct information on vaccination and to increase confidence in and among healthcare professionals as infectious diseases make a resurgence across the Continent. The consequences of low uptakes of certain kinds of vaccination can be damaging to the health and economic welfare of vulnerable citizens across Europe, and by extension to their families and wider communities.
The EFN, in the representation of the general care nurse profession, is launching this social media campaign in cooperation with CPME, PGEU, the European Commission (DG Sante), WHO Regional Office for Europe and the ECDC.
The EFN, CPME and PGEU are co-chairing the Coalition for Vaccination, an initiative coordinated by the European Commission. This Coalition is tackling vaccination hesitancy among healthcare professionals, to ensure that they vaccinate themselves and that they recommend vaccination to their patients.
The EFN’s Membership is active in the topic of vaccination, as it is reflected in the published report containing best practices for nurses’ competencies in prevention. This document is a comparative overview of 35 European Countries.