Abstract

Introduction. Morbidity of vaccine-preventable diseases has reached its lowest level of all time and according to vaccine paradox parents now worry more about the side eff ects of vaccines than about the disease that the vaccines were designed to prevent. Like elsewhere, immunization rates in Estonia are dropping.

Purpose. To describe parents` attitudes and their development towards childhood vaccination focusing more on vaccine-hesitant parents.

Methods. An anonymous voluntary questionnaire was distributed to 3 Estonian health centres to parents with children under 7 years of age. A total of 173 questionnaires were returned, yielding the return rate of 95%. Collected data were analysed with the help of PASWStatistics; the X2-test and Cramer V were used for assessing the power and direction of relationships.

Results.  The parents were divided into acceptors of childhood vaccination (74%), vaccinehesitant parents (17.8%) and rejectors (1%). Acceptance was associated with perceiving a vaccine-preventable disease as severe. Vaccinehesitant parents showed higher perception towards environmental risks and in the case of vaccination related risks became important. Vaccine-hesitant attitude played a more active role in one`s life compared to acceptance. The age and the education of the parents were associated with changes in attitudes. The most commonly used and most reliable vaccination related information source was the general practitioner.

Conclusions. Immunization was found to be part of universal risk perception. Communication skills become important in the case of risk-perceptive people. Exploring subjective risk perception would allow to develop more eff ective methods to increase immunization rates in Estonia.