Moving towards compulsory vaccination: The Italian experience

Vaccine hesitancy is a phenomenon that has increased widely in the last few years, in the Europe and in the USA, giving its consequences on vaccine coverage rates. The decrease in those rates caused an enormous spread of preventable infections that were quite rare in the past years, or, at least, presented mild consequences. Since immunization is an issue of coverage rates, the European Council prompted the National Health Authorities to face the challenge of reaching the target of 95% of the population, set by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), through the implementation of effective vaccination policies. In Italy, coverage rates have been decreasing in the last few years. In 2016, the following coverage rates at 24 months for birth cohort 2014 have been reported by Italian...