Causes of impaired immunization with pneumococcal vaccine in young children: a retrospective study

Relevance: Community-acquired pneumonia is one of the most widespread infectious diseases among young children. High levels of morbidity and mortality from community-acquired pneumonia indicate the need to prevent this pathology. The study aimed to identify the causes of impaired immunization with pneumococcal vaccination in young children. Materials and methods: The analyzed data were obtained from the informed consent forms or motivated refusals of legal representatives of children to vaccinate them. The children were divided into two groups. Group 1 included children who refused vaccination (n=304), and Group 2 had medical contraindications to vaccination (n=284). The findings were processed and evaluated on an IBM-compatible computer with the Windows XP operating system using the MS Excel 2017 (Microsoft), SPSS 12.0.2, and Statistica 20 software. Statistical analysis was carried out using the STATISTICA package. Pearson’s chi-square test was used to determine the significance of differences in the comparison groups. Differences were considered statistically significant at p<0.05. Results: The main reasons for refusals to vaccinate are the distrust of vaccines among children’s legal representatives (40.5%) and the refusals for religious reasons (29.3%). Among the temporary contraindications, acute respiratory viral infections (ARVI) prevailed without indicating the severity of the disease, with a duration of more than 4 weeks. Children under 1 year of age were more likely to have temporary contraindications for reasons such as ARVI or moderate pneumonia; children under 5 years of age represented consequences of encephalopathy, movement disorders, atopic dermatitis, and anemia (p = 0.0056). Conclusion: Thus, the predominance of refusals to vaccinate was revealed, as well as insufficient justification for the imposition of temporary contraindications, which, against the background of incomplete information from parents of children about the need for vaccination, leads to a violation of the schedule of immunization of children against the pneumococcal vaccine.