Children immunization – knowledge and attitudes of parents

Aim. The aim of the study was to investigate parents’ knowledge and attitudes towards compulsory immunization of their children.

Material and methods. The research was conducted with the survey questionnaire among 110 randomly chosen parents aged 18-40 whose infants were inpatients at the University Children’s Hospital in Lublin.

Results. The study revealed that parents were poorly informed about the age of the first vaccination of their infant, compulsory and recommended vaccines, combined vaccines, contraindications for vaccination and adverse reactions following immunization. More than 50% of the parents had a rather positive attitude towards vaccination. However, one fifth admitted that they had seen campaigns which presented immunization of children as harmful. The most popular opinion among the respondents was that compulsory and recommended vaccinations for children should be given only against the most dangerous diseases. The majority of parents considered vaccinations to be safe and only a small percentage of parents were against immunizing their children due to possible health complications. Most of the parents were willing to immunize their children with all the compulsory vaccines and only several recommended ones (as they are not free of charge). Many of them declared they would choose combined vaccines.

Conclusions. Attitudes of parents towards immunization of children varied in the studied group. We concluded that parents were generally poorly informed about immunization of infants. The fact that knowledge about vaccinations may influence parents’ future decisions to protect their children against numerous infectious diseases calls for intensified education on the subject.