And so the anti-vaxxers are causing Bolzano to plummet to the bottom of the healthcare rankings

Bolzano – along with only Calabria and Sicily – is the only region to have been given a failing mark in the new performance reports on healthcare recently published by the Ministry of Health: the red pen has been applied in particular to prevention. The province of Bolzano, in fact, has historically always recorded vaccination coverage below the national average, often ranking among the lowest in Italia for immunisation rates. Consequently, based on this criterion – in contrast to the province of Trento, for example – South Tyrol ranks very low, practically among the very lowest, in this national ranking just published on which regions best guarantee essential levels of care – that is, the services which the National Health Service is required to provide free of charge and uniformly from the north to the south of the country. These ‘report cards’ scrutinise all aspects of healthcare: from hospital care – measuring the effectiveness of hospital admissions – to prevention – calculating, for example, the percentage of children vaccinated – right through to community care, where one of the indicators is the proportion of elderly people receiving care at home.

This poor result is attributed in particular to the anti-vaccination movement, which has a strong presence in the valleys of South Tyrol. With 59 points in the prevention category, Bolzano’s score is the only one below the pass mark recorded in Trentino-South Tyrol, compared with Trento’s 98 points. In the district and hospital sectors, the two provinces are well above the national average. The Province of Bolzano has traditionally had a very low immunisation rate, including for paediatric vaccinations. According to recent data, in South Tyrol only 87.11 per cent of children aged 24 months are protected against polio, compared with the 95 per cent recommended by the WHO. With regard to the shortcomings in prevention, the Bolzano Health Authority states that “the figure, which remains low in the field of preventive healthcare, is attributable to the limited uptake of vaccinations recorded in South Tyrol”. For this reason, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and the South Tyrol Health Authority have for years been promoting specific information and awareness-raising campaigns, such as those dedicated to flu vaccinations and childhood vaccinations.

According to the Health Authority, “more generally, health protection and prevention represent a strategic pillar of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano’s government programme”. The new Provincial Prevention Plan is currently being drawn up; it includes information and awareness-raising measures, as well as initiatives “aimed at strengthening the public’s awareness and knowledge of health in various areas of prevention, such as physical activity, diet and mental health, as well as clinical prevention, such as screening and, last but not least, vaccinations”. It is emphasised that these initiatives as a whole “are yielding positive results”. “Indicators relating to the area of prevention have shown a steady improvement over recent years, and there is confidence that the 2025 and 2026 LEA Monitoring surveys will also show a further increase in the results achieved”, concludes the Health Authority.