Thursday, January 06, 2022

Vaccinatie twijfeltelefoon (the Dutch vaccination doubt helpline)

I thought this was an interesting idea. 

This is a Dutch initiative, staffed by trained medical students from a number of medical schools.   The idea is that you phone it to get more information about the vaccine - should I have the vaccine if I have this co-existing condition, can I have the vaccine if I am pregnant, that sort of thing.

If the caller is just calling to be anti-vaccination and to deliver views on that, then they are asked if they have a medical question, and if not, the call is ended.    The people answering the calls don't try to persuade you to take the vaccine, their role is to answer questions.   It is the caller's decision whether to be vaccinated or not.

As well as the telephone number, there are frequently asked questions on the Twijfeltelefoon site.

Here is a story in the Guardian, where I read about it.

This (in Dutch) is from NOS, the Dutch national broadcaster, and is the story the Guardian link to.   There is plenty of other coverage in the Dutch press about it - searching vaccinatie twijfel telefoon (three words) or vaccinatie twijfeltelefoon (two) seem to get slightly different results and the actual Twijfeltelefoon site (they themselves have that compound noun) link is after a page or more of news stories about it.

The phone number has changed, from the Guardian story, so the number in some of the news stories may not be right.

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