STAT+: Fueled by pandemic frustrations, populist parties are embracing anti-vaccine figures overseas, too
Fueled by pandemic frustrations, populist parties are embracing anti-vaccine figures — in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Countries with high uptake of the HPV vaccine, which protects against a virus that causes certain tumors, have seen dramatic reductions in cervical cancer. It’s why, in Austria, for example, providers are trying to offer it to as many people as possible.
But at a cancer prevention event in the country’s capital over the weekend, there was a particular sense of urgency to administer free shots. An initiative to provide the vaccines to people under 30, when usually they’re available to people under 21, is set to lapse at the end of the year.
Elmar Joura, who specializes in gynecologic oncology at the Medical University of Vienna and who attended the event, doesn’t have high hopes that the program will be extended. The political party that might take leadership in Austria’s next government probably won’t back such an effort.
