Israel's vaccination campaign is one of the most extensive and successful ones in the world. For several months the Health Ministry and its top representatives have been encouraging Israelis to get inoculated, and rightfully so.
Nevertheless, the Ministry, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and Director-General Hezi Levi, in particular, has until now failed to get the entire public on board with getting their jabs.
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So much so that during Tuesday's celebration of reaching four million Israelis vaccinated, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the 579,000 Israelis over the age of 50 who have not gotten their inoculation yet, to do so.
How is it possible that half a million Israelis over the age of 50 have not gotten their vaccines yet?
We know that a fraction of them are anti-vaxxers affected by fake news. The majority, however, are either indifferent or hesitant about getting inoculated. It is those Israelis that the Health Ministry should be targeting. There is a need for a continuous explanation on the safety of the process and encouragement from the healthcare system, especially family doctors.
Instead, the Health Ministry is trying to promote a bill that, among other things, would prevent unvaccinated employees from working in their offices and make it possible to share their personal information with local authorities.
The insistence of promoting such an unprecedented bill reflects the Health Ministry's continuous failure to lead the national campaign that had been entrusted to them: to inform the public of the danger of the virus and make sure the majority gets vaccinated.
Moreover, informing the public of the inherent danger of COVID will cause them to be more cautious with observing safety guidelines. In this case too, however, there also exists a small group of doctors, scientists, and journalists that spreads fake news and lies, taking advantage of the Health Ministry's failure to inform the public properly.
The ministry's failure did not occur during COVID, however. Its officials had been warned several times throughout the years, but they chose not to listen.
The State Comptroller warned the Health Ministry back in 2013 about a worrisome increase in parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. He called on the ministry to take immediate action. It didn't.
The ministry continued down this disastrous path during the measles outbreak, when parents in many communities and settlements refused to vaccinate their children, endangering the life of every other child in the vicinity.
According to ministry data, the level of vaccination of children with vaccines that have withstood the test of time is high, 97.8% to 95.2%. The vaccination rate for relatively newer vaccines, however, like the flu shot, is an alarming 48.6% -30.5%.
Despite the State Comptroller's warnings, the public criticism, the negative publicity, and the worrisome decrease in the number of vaccinations among the Israeli public, the Health Ministry failed to educate the public that every vaccination protects the health of that person in particular and the entire nation in general.
Moreover, it invested very little effort to battle ignorance and misinformation about the vaccine. Now we all pay the price for their negligence.
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