Comparison of attitude of Indian and Russian parents to children’s vaccination

Abstract

Background. The vaccine preventable diseases outbreaks have become more frequent in recent decades and the lack of global vaccine awareness has been increasing and deteriorating vaccine compliance. The aim. To assess the attitude towards vaccination of parents from India and Russia. Methods. 1620 parents from Russia (Irkutsk city) and 214 parents from India (Kerala state) took part in the international cross-sectional multicenter study via survey method. Results. Parents from both countries showed good adherence to vaccination, only 1 % of Indians and 2 % of Russians did not vaccinate their children. More than 90 % of Russians took information from pediatricians compared with other sources with a prevalence of pediatricians working in the public health system 91.7 % (95 % CI: 90.2–92.9), whereas only 50 % of Indians were informed about vaccination from pediatricians (p < 0.0001). The main source of vaccine information for Indian parents was Internet (52.8 %; 95 % CI: 46.1–59.3) and mass-media (83.6 %; 95% CI: 78.1–87.9), whereas Russians resorted to this source much less (0.3 %; 95 % CI: 0.1–0.7 for Internet; and 4.3 %; 95 % CI: 3.4–5.4 for mass-media; p < 0.0001). Interestingly, while the vast majority of Russians received information about vaccination from a pediatrician, 71.2 % (95 % CI: 68.9–73.3) wanted to know more. Indians suffered from a lack of information too, but not as much (63.1 %; 95 % CI: 56.4–69.3; p = 0.01). Conclusion. Despite of a good attitude to vaccination of parents from India and Russia the lack of vaccine information was registered.

Keywords

• vaccination
• children
• vaccine preventable diseases
• vaccine awareness
• vaccine knowledge
• vaccine hesitancy
• vaccination refusal