Moscow (AFP)
Faced with the rise of the anti-vaccine movement, the city of Moscow has recruited bloodthirsty vampires, to emphasize the importance of getting immunized.
The health department of the Russian capital launched this week on the internet a video whose hero is a scary vampire, accompanied by his daughter, who asks a doctor if her child can safely drink the blood of unvaccinated people.
The doctor, who notes that it would probably be good not to drink blood at all, notes that it would be particularly dangerous to consume the hemoglobin of someone who has not been vaccinated.
"So that's why some parents are against vaccination, to prevent us from biting their children?" Asks the Muscovite Dracula.
The video ends with a call to vaccinate children, while in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe and the United States, an anti-vaccine movement is gaining ground.
Several Muscovite officials also called for making vaccination mandatory. France has recently increased the number of compulsory vaccines to combat lower vaccination rates.
The World Health Organization and the UN Children's Program, Unicef, warned in July that vaccination is on the wane around the world. In the first line, measles.
Russia and three other former Soviet republics - Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Georgia - accounted for 78 per cent of measles cases in the first half of 2019.
The anti-vaccines rely on false scientific studies to claim that there is a link between vaccination and autism.
In addition, a study last year of George Washington University had established that Russian computer trolls were behind an anti-vaccine campaign on social networks in the United States.
mm / alf / apo / jhd
© 2019 AFP