Attitudes towards vaccination among adult patients of vilnius clinics

Reasoning: The privity and attitudes to vaccination and vaccines is significant for the number of reasons: • It is important that people would understand the benefits of vaccines, both preventive – protection from various dangerous infectious diseases and complications – and economical – the expenses for vaccination are 10 to 17 times lower than those needed for the curing of infected (5). • Lithuanian Government and other countries allocate big expenses for the vaccination (there are 740 000 Lt devoted to inoculation of adults against diphtheria and tetanus in the National immunoprophylaxis program year 2006 - 2008), so it is important that people would vaccinate as required (6). • The degree of vaccination throughout people depends on privity and attitudes. Only 5 percent of people are inoculated against influenza in Lithuania every year. Due to this low number we can expect to receive vaccines from foreign countries only for 16.5 to 17 percent of people in the event of pandemic influenza. This is because of technological reasons, which mean that the nation can expect to receive amount of pandemic vaccine just three times more than annual number of inoculated patients, plus 10 percent (7). It is important to find out the opinion and privity of people about vaccination, so that we could change their points of view in order to increase the percentage of inoculation. Aim of the work: To determine the privity and attitudes of patients of Vilnius clinics about the vaccines and vaccination. Tasks of the work: 1. To determine the privity of Vilnius adult clinics’ patients concerning vaccines and vaccination. 2. To determine the attitudes of Vilnius adult clinics’ patients about vaccines and vaccination. Methods: The anonymous questionnaire of 700 of Vilnius clinics patients was conducted. 686 forms of questionnaires with the answers of the patients of Vilnius city and Vilnius region were analyzed. Conclusions: 1. The majority of interviewers (62.6 percent) agreed or fully agreed with the statement that vaccines provide more benefits than harm. The answers of the people do not depend on gender. 2. The question „Do the adults need to be inoculated against the infections that could be managed by vaccines i.e. diphtheria, tetanus, etc?” was answered positive by the half of respondents (49.8 percent) and about one-third didn‘t have an opinion about it (34.2 percent). The answers do not depend on gender. 3. 28.8 percent of respondents agreed or fully agreed that influenza vaccines are safe. The majority of respondents (61.5 percent) neither had any opinion nor agreed or disagreed. The answers do not depend on gender. 4. To the question „Is the vaccination against influenza effective, i.e. does it prevent the infection, lowers the risk of complications, relieves the illness process, etc?“ about the half of respondents (50.9 percent) answered „yes“, about one-third (35.4 percent) said „don‘t know“. The statistically significantly bigger part of answered women than of answered men answered positive to this question. 5. More than half (55.6 percent) of respondents claimed that they lack information about the vaccines. The answers do not depend on gender. 6. The information about the vaccines mostly reaches the respondents by television (72.6 percent), other sources are friends and families (63.5 percent), newspapers and magazines (53.8 percent) and the family doctors (51.9 percent). 7. Most of the respondents (74.5 percent) claimed that they didn‘t know the requirement of inoculation against diphtheria and tetanus every 10 years. The statistically significantly bigger part of answered men than of answered women said that they knew the requirement to inoculate against diphtheria and tetanus every 10 years