(282) Immunization: Are We Confident or Hesitant?

Publication Number: 1327

Background: Despite the global success of vaccines, World identifies vaccine hesitancy (VH) as one of the top 10 threats to global health. Therefore, vaccines are said to be victims of their own success. The impact of vaccine hesitancy will be reflected in lower vaccine uptake rates than expected globally.

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the incidence of hesitancy towards vaccination for children and to identify the factors and predictor variables within the study population.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted on a web-based platform for a period of six months. Study enrolled general population who were aged 18 years and above and were willing to give consent to take part in the study. Study tool used was World Health Organization SAGE Working Group Questionnaire. The predictors for vaccine hesitancy were determined by using bivariate logistic regression analysis and the prevalence of hesitancy was identified.

Results: A total of 353 subjects were enrolled in the study during the study period. Among them 56.71% of the study population showed vaccine hesitancy. 20.2% of study population were having the mentality of antivaccine. Vaccine refusers were 10.0% and 10.6% were shown hesitancy towards vaccination. Obligated to take vaccine was shown by 21.5%. Among the vaccines, maximum hesitancy was observed for chicken pox vaccine [47 (13.31%)], followed by Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine [25 (7.08%)] and Rotavirus vaccine [24 (6.79%)], whereas the minimum hesitancy was observed for Bacillus Calmitte Guerin vaccine (BCG) [2 (0.56%)], Oral Polio Vaccine [4 (1.13%)] and Inactivated Polio Vaccine [8 (2.26%)]. On performing the bi-variate analysis it was found that among the subsets studied those who were more hesitant to receive vaccines were females (OR: 1.476); those from age 40-49yrs (OR: 3.710); those from a rural background (OR: 1.277), these subsets were predictors identified for vaccine hesitancy.

Conclusions: Study findings observed that vaccine hesitancy is common for optional vaccines due to various reasons such as lack of awareness, cost of the vaccine, availability of vaccines and negative news on safety of the vaccines. Education interventions through the health care professionals may help to address most of the issues and can bring the population back to vaccine confidence.