BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Dec 13, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Health authorities in a western province of Argentina said Friday they were taking legal action against 15 parents for failing to vaccinate their children amid falling immunization rates nationwide.

"This is just the beginning," Mendoza Provincial Health Minister Rodolfo Montero told AFP, adding that more parents would be targeted by lawsuits in the coming days.

Argentina's National Immunization Schedule includes over a dozen free mandatory vaccines from birth through adulthood.

As part of a federal republic, provinces in Argentina have a large degree of autonomy over health services.

In August, Mendoza province adopted a new regulation allowing authorities to identify parents who fail to have their children vaccinated.

Under the new provisions, health workers and teachers are required to report non-compliant parents, who could face fines of up to 336,000 pesos ($230), be sentenced to community service or even be sent to prison for a few days.

"The idea is not to persecute families and parents but to manage to immunize thousands of children whose vaccines are not up to date," Montero said.

He said the punitive approach was producing results, prompting three people targeted in the lawsuits to quickly update their children's vaccinations.

Local authorities said they are witnessing more of a laissez-faire attitude to vaccines than an ideological refusal of immunization on, for example, religious grounds.

The overall vaccination rate is 65 percent but for some diseases, like measles, rubella and mumps, it hovers at around 50 percent.

This year, the South American country recorded its first significant outbreak of measles in a generation, with 35 cases reported.

Health authorities have also reported hundreds of cases of whooping cough. Seven children have died from the disease.