An adaptation of the instructions after a tragedy at a school. The Medical Agency (ANSM) recommends that adolescents vaccinated against humain papillomavirus doivent rester allongés ou assis par terre pendant les quinze minutes suivant l’injection deux weeks après la chute mortelle d’un adolescent suite à un malaise post-vaccinal dans a school.
In a document published on Tuesday on its website, the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) updates the “post-vaccination surveillance” instructions for health professionals.
As one of the main side effects of the vaccine is the risk of “discomfort”, “it is important that simple measures be taken to avoid any injury: vaccinated people should remain lying down (on rugs or blankets) or sitting on the floor leaning against a wall in a clear space,” explains the agency.
End of simple “surveillance”
Until now, according to the vaccination instructions in universities, organized since October, it was only recommended that students be monitored within a quarter of an hour following the injection, without specifying in what context.
A note from the ARS (Regional Health Agency) Ile-de-France published in June explained that students should sit in “chairs” or “armchairs” and recommended that students who were not feeling well lie down.
This change in instructions comes after the death of a fifth-grade student at the Saint-Dominique school in Saint-Herblain, near Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), at the end of October, after a severe fall, confirmed to AFP on Tuesday ANSM.
The Nantes prosecutor’s office, which opened a homicide investigation, told AFP that “the schoolboy, who felt unwell shortly after the injection, was sitting in a chair and fell on his back after feeling unwell.”
Discomfort remains “uncommon”
The ANSM specifies that post-vaccination discomfort, sometimes a brief loss of consciousness, is “rare and resolves quickly, may correspond to a psychogenic reaction to the injection” and “may be accompanied by tremors or rigidity.”
At the beginning of October, the campaign was launched in France to vaccinate fifth-grade high school students against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes numerous cancers, such as cervical cancer. It’s not mandatory.
Source: BFM TV
