Parents' Negative Attitudes towards Childhood Immunization: What is the Basis and What Steps are Needed to Change them

Abstract

Relevance. The growth of distrust in vaccination in recent years has become a problem that impedes the improvement of the epidemic situation in the world, including in Russia. This requires the adoption of adequate response measures. Aim. Find out the attitude of parents to the vaccination of children and the reasons for its formation, to determine the directions of work to overcome distrust in vaccination. Materials and methods. The vaccination coverage of children aged 3–14 years in Petrozavodsk (Republic of Karelia) in 2019–2020 and the reasons why children remain unvaccinated in comparison with 2007 data were analyzed. In 2021, a survey was conducted of 3110 parents of children attending preschool educational institutions and schools about their attitude to vaccination, about the reasons for refusal to vaccinate, sources of information about vaccinations, knowledge about vaccines, immunity and the importance of vaccination. Results and discussion. Vaccination coverage of children exceeds 96%, but in the last decade there has been an increase in the number of unvaccinated children, which is primarily due to an increase in parents' refusals to vaccinate. For this reason, children were not vaccinated 12.9–27.2 times more often than for medical contraindications. Most often, parents did not want to vaccinate their children against hepatitis B and rubella. Concerns about the safety of vaccines are more often based on personal experience or the experience of other parents (56.6 ± 1.2%) than on information from Internet sites (41.0 ± 1.2%). Before make a decision to refuse vaccination, 36.9 ± 1.5% of parents consulted doctors, while 19.2 ± 0.9% of parents who refuse vaccination received negative information from doctors. The results of the survey revealed an overestimated self-assessment of the ability to analyze the information read, distrust of official information, a biased attitude towards vaccines, a lack of understanding of the importance of forming population immunity in a significant part of parents, as well as an insufficient level of professional training in vaccine prevention among pediatricians. Conclusions. Results of assessing the reasons for the increase in the number of parents' refusing childhood immunization indicate necessary improving the work on identifying and investigating adverse events following immunization, informing the population about the safety and effectiveness of vaccination, training and periodic monitoring of doctors' knowledge about vaccination.

Keywords

• vaccine prophylaxis
• vaccines
• vaccine refusals
• medical bends