Treasury drops plan to cut allotments from parents

Israel Council for the Child reports Treasury drops objection to cutting child allotments for parents who refuse to immunize offspring.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Giving a vaccination injection shot 370 (R) (photo credit: Chaiwat Subprasom / Reuters)
Giving a vaccination injection shot 370 (R)
(photo credit: Chaiwat Subprasom / Reuters)
The Treasury has dropped its objection to cutting child allotments for parents who refuse to immunize their offspring against childhood diseases, the Israel Council for the Child reported in triumph on Monday.
The council strongly supports vaccinations but it has opposed – in three appeals to the High Court of Justice within four years – withholding allotments from families that oppose vaccinations for ideological or other reasons.
Council chairman Dr. Yitzhak Kadman said that it was “the wise men of the Treasury who in the 2009 Arrangements Law dreamed up the wrong idea of hurting children and child allotments as a punishment for parents who did not take their children for shots.”
Now, the Finance Ministry has changed its mind and cancelled the “harmful and unnecessary fine,” he said.
“It’s a shame,” he continued, “that only now has the Treasury decided to forgo its idea and to get its satisfaction in another, much more cruel way by cutting child allotments in a drastic way. The council supports vaccination as an effective and proven method for preventing disease and mortality and strengthening children’s health, but it’s better to advance vaccination rates – which in any case in Israel are among the highest in the world – through information and education and making the immunization service more accessible to all sectors, instead of futile plans to punish children and families by hitting them in their pockets.”
Kadman concluded that he hopes that all the money the Treasury meant to invest in mechanisms for the Health Ministry to report to the National Insurance Institute and back again will be invested in open educational campaigns for parents and making Tipat Halav wellbaby centers more accessible to all parts of the population.