Midwives will now be able to vaccinate almost all minors, while their prerogatives until then were essentially limited to pregnant women and newborns, according to a decree published this Thursday in the Official Gazette.
As with nurses and pharmacists, midwives had already gotten increased vaccination opportunities in recent months.
In spring, midwives had thus obtained the right to administer to pregnant women and newborns, as well as to their immediate environment, all the vaccines provided for in the vaccination schedule, in particular MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, polio), and not just vaccines against tuberculosis and hepatitis B.
From now on, these prerogatives will be extended to all “minors according to the recommendations of the current vaccination schedule,” according to a decree published in the Official Gazette.
This text takes note of the recommendations given at the end of June by the High Health Authority, which had ruled in favor of said extension, in order to ensure continuity in care from birth to adolescence.
An exception for immunocompromised minors
However, one exception to this expansion: midwives will not be able to vaccinate immunocompromised minors when it is a live vaccine that works from an attenuated version of the microbe. This is for example the case of the ROR.
Thursday’s decree also expanded midwives’ other skills in vaccination. In pregnant women, they can already vaccinate against rabies, herpes zoster or yellow fever.
Again, the new measure excludes the administration of live attenuated vaccines to immunocompromised women. They include those for yellow fever and shingles.
Source: BFM TV
