France will make it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children starting in 2018 because it is "unacceptable" children are "still dying of measles," said French Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe during Tuesday's parliamentary address.
The move follows Italy's policy where children cannot attend state schools unless they have been vaccinated. In Italy, 12 vaccines are mandatory for school children while France will require 11 for school children through the age of 16.
Diptheria, tetanus, and polio are already mandatory, but whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitus B, influenza, pneumonia, and meningitis C will be added to the list.
Philippe said "diseases that we believed to be eradicated are developing once again, children are dying of the measles in France and in the country of Pasteur, that is unacceptable. We have the same problem with meningitis. It's not acceptable that a 15-year-old teenager could die just because they have not been vaccinated."
Between 2008 and 2016 there have been 10 deaths from measles in France, with more than 24,000 cases declared during that time period. Sixty-nine percent of French people said they had confidence in vaccinations, according to a survey published in October, but that number was the lowest it has been since 2012.
"We are astonished to see that 41 percent of the French say they are wary of vaccinations," François Chast, head of pharmacology at Paris hospitals, told the Local.
"It is urgent to fight the speeches of anti-science and anti-vaccination lobbies that play on fear, they show nothing and rely on a few very rare side effects to discredit vaccines that save millions of lives," he said.
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