A Cohesive Study on Vaccine Refusal and Hesitancy in Perak, Malaysia

Abstract

Background:

Vaccines are crucial in the prevention of major infectious diseases in children. With the present immunisation regime in Malaysia, there are still unvaccinated youngsters.

Objective:

The goal of this study is to collect data on parental acceptance and refusal from 2014 to 2018, measure parents' knowledge, attitudes, and practise regarding childhood vaccination awareness, evaluate their association with parental socio-demographic factors, and encourage parents to get additional vaccination for their children's health.

Results:

Convenience sampling method was used to select the KK Gunung Rapat. Approximately 300 children attended the clinic during 1 month. Minimum sample size was calculated assuming that 50% of parents will be having good level of knowledge with precision of 0.05 and for 95% confidence level as 169 using openepi online statistics calculator. . Among the 169 participants, 156 of them were female which contributes to 92.3% while 13 of them ware males which contribute to 7.7%. As for the race, there are 129 Malays, 17 Chinese, 18 Indian and 5 others with 76.3%, 10.1%, 10.7% and 3.0% respectively. There are 52.7 % parents who are more than 30 years old whereas 47.3% of them age less than 30 years old.

Conclusion:

To sum up, once the differences in literacy levels among parents are understood, it is vital to build understandable intensive educating interventions to provide a better understanding at each level of parent comprehension.