Delay or refusal of newborn vaccination

Abstract

Background. Vaccinations are one of the methods of prevention against many infectious diseases. During the analysis of differences in the implementation of basic vaccinations in newborns in individual countries of the European Union, there emerges the significant problem of the lack of unification of such types of prevention programs. In Poland, parents are obliged to vaccinate newborns. In the first day of the child’s life, two vaccinations are obligatory: against tuberculosis and hepatitis B. Currently, the number of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children is increasing in Poland. Objectives. Comparison of the scale of the refusal of neonatal vaccinations in a clinical and poviat hospital as well as the characteristics of mothers refusing vaccination and newborns. Material and methods. An observational and retrospective study based on the analysis of medical records from 2017. The study covered two hospitals: clinical and poviat in the Mazowieckie voivodship. The analysis covered 7118 records regarding live births from a clinical hospital and 621 from a district hospital. Results and conclusions. The vast majority of children are vaccinated on the first day after delivery. In the examined groups the percentage of unvaccinated children was lower than 8%. Parents whose children are born in a clinical hospital more often refused vaccination. In the district hospital, the number of refusals was negligible. Mothers of unvaccinated children were most often multiparous and some of them experienced obstetric loss. Most newborns (75%) who were not vaccinated were vaginally and in good condition. The delay in vaccinations resulting from doctors’ decisions concerned mainly children with birthweight below 2000 g, as this excludes vaccination against tuberculosis.