Kindergartens in Slovakia will accept only children who are vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, viral hepatitis B, measles, mumps, Haemophilus influenzae and pneumoccocal infections, and those who are exempted from vaccination due to a pre-existent medical condition. On Wednesday, the government passed an amendment to the Act on the Protection, Promotion and Development of Public Health, which regulates the conditions of compulsory vaccination for preschool children. The law should enter into force on 1 January and it will apply to both state and private facilities.
Slovakia's head hygiene officer Ján Mikas stated already earlier this year that mandatory vaccination measures were necessary to avert a situation that is getting serious. In the past months, there have been emergencies called due to measles outbreaks. Milan Muška from the Association of Towns and Municipalities of Slovakia also stated that the new legal measure in fact protects groups of children in pre-school facilities. Unvaccinated children may be a source of the disease affecting other children who cannot be vaccinated due to contraindications or who suffer from immune deficiencies. On the other hand, Branislav Gröhling from the opposition Freedom and Solidarity party thinks, "we should raise as high as possible the threshold for children to be vaccinated to enter kindergarten, not make vaccination a duty, or to blackmail parents with it".
The new bill also removes the penalty for not complying with mandatory vaccination. The sanction fee that could have been imposed on parents could reach up to €331. Slovak parents most often refuse vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella. In 2016, 1635 children did not get vaccinated, in 2015, the number was 1593. At the regional level, the highest rejection rates for compulsory vaccination were reported in the Trenčín and Bratislava regions.
