Midwives will now be able to vaccinate almost all minors, whereas their prerogatives were until then essentially limited to pregnant women and newborns, according to a decree published Thursday, August 18 in the Official newspaper.
As with nurses and pharmacists, midwives had already obtained greater opportunities for vaccination in recent months.
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In the spring, midwives had thus obtained the right to administer to pregnant women and newborns, as well as to their immediate entourage, all the vaccines provided for in the vaccination schedule – in particular MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, poliomyelitis) – and no longer only vaccines against tuberculosis and hepatitis B. From now on, these prerogatives will extend to all “minors according to the recommendations of the vaccination schedule in force“, according to a decree published in the OJ.
This text takes note of the recommendations given at the end of June by the High Authority for Health, which had come out in favor of such an extension, in order to ensure continuity in the care from birth to adolescence. One exception, however, to this expansion: midwives will not be able to vaccinate immunocompromised minors when it comes to a live vaccine that works from an attenuated version of the microbe. This is for example the case of the ROR.
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Thursday’s decree also expanded other skills of midwives in vaccination. In pregnant women, they can now vaccinate against rabies, shingles 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.
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