Digital Pharma: Sanofi Pasteur MSD takes Quora approach to vaccines
pharmafile | May 6, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications | Digital Pharma blog, Sanofi Pasteur, vaccines
Sanofi Pasteur MSD is aiming to tackle myths and misconceptions about vaccines with a Quora-like online health information campaign in Germany.
Taking a leaf out of the book of the up and coming Q&A website, Impfen im Dialog (‘Vaccination Dialogue’) allows visitors to submit questions and vote for their favourites. Those with the most votes will be answered by the company’s panel of experts.
Sanofi Pasteur MSD, a vaccines-focused joint venture between Sanofi-Aventis and Merck Sharpe & Dohme, is also supporting the initiative with new social media presences on Twitter and Facebook.
There is a strong online anti-vaccination movement and as a consequence of this and the discredited MMR vaccine research by Dr Andrew Wakefield the number of cases of preventable diseases are rising.
This year has already seen serious outbreaks of measles in a number of European countries, including Germany, and the World Health Organization has been urging those who have not been immunised to get the jab.
So there’s no doubt that with Impfen im Dialog Sanofi Pasteur MSD is aiming at a worthy subject, but whether those who already ignore the vaccination message can be won over remains to be seen, especially given the composition of the new site’s panel.
Its vaccination experts consist of Sanofi Pasteur MSD Germany’s medical director Dr Erika Harzer, its director of scientific affairs & market access Dr Klaus Schlüter, communications director Florian Martius and medical education manager Dr Stephen Gromer.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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