Type: Meeting/debate
Vaccines represent the most effective prevention tool against devastating diseases, which can cause epidemics and deaths. Vaccines represent the clinical intervention that has had a major impact on human health saving five lives a minute worldwide. The smallpox example with herd immunity represents a successful case which has eradicated a disease. The new National Vaccination Plan 2017-2019 has been incorporated in the universal basic package of services that the National Health System guarantees to all citizens. After water purification, the introduction of vaccines has been one the most important Public Health interventions for humanity, in terms of reduction of the susceptibility of infections, decrease of healthcare and social costs connected to infectious diseases and to their consequences. However, vaccines are “victims of their own success”: the burden of diseases prevented by vaccines has decreased, the risk of vaccines is perceived to be greater than the risk of the disease and therefore “anti-vax” campaigns have increased. The National Vaccination Plan is ambitious and needs the coordinated and multidisciplinary support of all healthcare workers. Pharmacists in different settings (community and hospital) have a crucial role in logistics, as a reference in the therapeutic choice with clinicians, counselling patients and detecting and reporting adverse events. The objective of the course is to present the state of the art on vaccines with the latest vaccination plan and to raise awareness among pharmacists about the important functions that need to be brought out and critical issues that can be encountered. The course, which is addressed to community pharmacists and to hospital pharmacy interns, will start with a quiz to understand the knowledge level of the participants; experts on the theme will then present different points of view on vaccines; finally, there will be a group discussion between participants and experts and participants will then fill out the same quiz as the beginning to understand how much has been learned. Useful material will be given out to promote awareness campaigns in all settings.
For more information, please reach out to: secampbelldavies@gmail.com
Organiser: Sifo – Area giovani, Scuole di specializzazione, AGIFAR, Aziende Ospedaliere