Causes of delayed immunization with pneumococcal vaccine and aetiological patterns of pneumonia in young children

Abstract

To analyze the causes of delayed immunizationwith pneumococcal vaccine, as well as the impactof vaccination on the aetiology and severityof pneumonia in young children. Individual healthrecords (f112/u) and vaccination records (f 063) of 309children with delayed pneumonia vaccination were studied.The children were divided into two groups. The firstgroup includes children (n=163) with vaccination refusals,the second group includes those with temporary medicalcontraindications (n=146). Additionally, retrospectivestudy of health records of 71 children aged 0 days to 1.5years was conducted. They were divided into 2 groups:the first included vaccinated children (n=36), the second– unvaccinated (n=35). To compare the data of 2 groups,IBM SPSS Statistics 20 was used for the calculation of CI(Confidence interval) for the ratio with the specified plevel– 0.05. Vaccination refusals in the described casesamounted to 52.7%, temporary medical contraindicationwas 47.2%. Among the main reasons for vaccination refusals,distrust of the vaccine is a prevailing one – 39.9%.Severe pneumonia in unvaccinated children was 42.9%(CI 95%, 26.5-59.3) of the total number of cases. In vaccinatedchildren, the proportion of severe pneumonia was22.2 % (CI 95%, 8.6 – 35.8) of the total number of cases.Thus, cases of severe pneumonia development in unvaccinatedchildren are 20.7% more than in vaccinated children,p>0.05. It should be noted that the applied for thecomparison 95 % CI did not show statistically significantdifferences in the two groups, which indicates the needfor further study of the issue of increasing the sample size.