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. ARTICLE HISTORY

Factors related to parents’ adherence to childhood immunization

“…Our study sheds light on non-adherence as an existing issue even with Saudi Arabia’s high coverage rate and the availability of a free routine immunizations program that is offered to all citizens. This means the coverage rate might overestimate the population protection and is not a good indicator for the real dynamics of children’s immunizations [ 40 ], as 50.9% of parents in our study had delays in their children’s immunizations. This study highlights the fact that a high proportion of children aged 6 months to 6 years are not immunized based on age-appropriate vaccines.…”

Adherence to the paediatric immunisation schedule in England

“…Such efforts should involve educational, clinical, and policy interventions targeted at improving the infrastructure used for vaccine delivery, training health care professionals, and educating parents to raise awareness about the importance of timely vaccinations. [3] , [25] , [50] , [51] , [52] Also strengthening the relationship between the health care providers and particularly parents with several children and families with a lower educational level or lower socioeconomic status is an approach that should be considered. [26] , [53] , [54] , [55] …”

“…However, high coverage rates may overestimate protection when adherence to the immunisation schedule - i.e. the timeliness of vaccinations - is low [3] . Despite high vaccination coverage, non-adherence to the recommended immunisation schedule may jeopardise the intended protection by vaccination.…”

“…Despite high vaccination coverage, non-adherence to the recommended immunisation schedule may jeopardise the intended protection by vaccination. Late vaccinations may leave a child vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases for a longer than intended period, while vaccines received earlier or at shorter intervals than recommended may lead to a suboptimal immune response and a false sense of protection [3] , [4] , [5] .…”

Editorial Commentary on the paper “Mandatory vaccination in Europe”

“…Methods for improving vaccination coverage rates should firstly be based on: (I) improving the infrastructure used for delivering vaccines, (II) training health care providers involved, (III) raising awareness about the significance of vaccines amongst parents and (IV) addressing vaccine hesitancy (14,15). Vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon.…”