SUMMARY

Today, more than ever, we live in a global world and the illnesses take part in this wholeness due to the population movements, among other reasons. Illnesses encounter no borders and the risks of suffering global pandemics are up to day more real than at any other moment in the history of humanity. Preventative vaccines can contribute to face the upcoming world healthcare challenges. Nevertheless, their detractors notify on the important economic interests that underlie the political campaigns for global immunization. Our reflections start from the previous premises. The global prevention and the vaccination are compounds that contextualize this issue, such a complex and controversial one as that of childhood vaccination. The adoption of measures aiming at promoting and generalizing the vaccination of underage people has favored the development of ad hoc campaigns, more noticeably in the international arena. In the first part of the article, the international actions that are promoting global childhood immunization are shown. Regarding this issue, the initiatives carried out in the framework of the United Nations and the European Union stand out. In the above mentioned international context, two features attract attention. On the one hand, the progressive increase of childhood vaccination that has reached very high rates in some countries due to the commitment assumed by the States and to the success of the promotional campaigns, among others. On the other hand, a certain anxiety appears when verifying the existence of accusations on possible damages produced by the vaccines that have been presented before the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, created by the WHO as an independent consultative body in 1999. These accusations show the possibility that a causal link among the administration of some vaccines and the development of illnesses as serious as, for example, pediatric acute linfocitic leukemia or multiple sclerosis, exists. Apart from referring to the above-mentioned issues, the second part of the article examines the legislative answer of the States regarding childhood vaccination. In concrete, two conflicting models involving the two main legislative options that the States have are compared. At first, the Spanish system, that only endorses the vaccination of minors and then, the characteristics of the American system, that has chosen the obligatory vaccination, are shown. This last system, despite that it legally imposes the vaccination, contemplates exemptions on religious and ideological grounds as an attempt to combine the safety represented by childhood vaccination and the freedom requested by people who are against vaccines. Besides, the American model foresees the creation of an administrative framework that allows copying with the main challenges that can arise. In this sense, it focuses on the creation of a federal program to finance the vaccination of the children belonging to families with scarce economic resources and establishes a compensation program that permits to face the State’s patrimonial responsibility derived from the possible damages caused to underage people through vaccination. Along the text, there is a question that arises recurrently which must not be forgotten: childhood vaccination, due to the lack of legal capacity of underage people, is accepted or rejected by those who have parental authority so the children suffer the effects of the decisions adopted on their behalf.