Compliance with vaccination schedules

Abstract

Childhood immunization is amongst the most cost-effective public health interventions for reducing children’s morbidity and mortality. Vaccination coverage is commonly used to assess the vaccination status of a community. Adherence to schedule is critical for providing maximum effectiveness against vaccine-preventable diseases in the community. This is of paramount importance for diseases that are continuously circulating because they can cause large outbreaks. All stakeholders (public health administrators and vaccination providers) should work together in order to increase both vaccination coverage and adherence to schedule. They have to improve the infrastructure used for delivering vaccines, train the health care professionals and finally raise the awareness of the importance of vaccines among parents.

Keywords

• vaccination coverage
• vaccination uptake
• vaccination adherence
• childhood immunization