Germany prepares a fine of 2,500 euros for parents who do not vaccinate their children against measles

The German Minister of Health has proposed fines for parents of children of school age who are not vaccinated against measles, while fearing a possible return of the contagious disease in the country after the outbreak in the United States and the growth of the anti-vaccine movement.

Parents who can not prove that their children have been vaccinated against the disease, very contagious and potentially deadly, they will have to pay 2,500 euros (2,790 dollars), Minister Jens Spahn told Saturday at the German weekly Bild am Sonntag.

As well unvaccinated children would be prohibited from attending nursery schools to protect those who are too young to be immunized against the disease or have medical reasons for not doing so, he explained in an interview published Sunday.

Spahn, which belongs to the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) of Chancellor Angela Merkel, He added Sunday that this measure should affect some 600,000 Germans: 361,000 children in day-care centers and schools that have not yet received the vaccine, and about 220,000 workers in schools, hospitals and medical centers.

Compulsory medical procedures are a controversial issue in Germany because of the history of sterilization and even forced euthanasia practiced during Nazism, but for the moment the measure announced by Spahn was welcomed, although this must always be debated by Merkel's cabinet.

Frank Ulrich Montgomery, Director of the German Medical Association, celebrated this announcement as "an important step at the right time", in an interview with the channel RND.

The Spahn project aims to make vaccination mandatory from 2020, whena vaccination record will be imposed that parents must submit before enrolling their children in nurseries or schools.

Germany registered 203 cases of measles in the first 10 weeks of 2019, more than double that of the same period of the previous year but less than in 2017.

Neighboring Switzerland announced last week that two adults had died of measles this year. One of them was 30 years old and he was not vaccinated, while the second was over 70 years old and his immune system was weakened by cancer.

According to most experts, If at least 95% of the population is vaccinated, it is unlikely that there is a measles outbreak. Germany, however, it has not been able in recent years to overcome 93% of the vaccination in its population, according to Bild.

Europe recorded 82,596 measles cases in 2018 that resulted in 72 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The majority of them, 52 218, is produced in Ukraine, where An armed conflict between the government and the separatists has undermined immunization programs and medical care in general.