International aspects of anti-vaccination attitude: implications for public health (literature review)

Abstract

Successful immunization programmes are the result of high vaccine effectiveness and timely use. Numerous studies have shown that immunization will be effective with government support, taking into account the local culture of the population, and approaches to vaccination to optimize results. Purpose. Summarize the world’s data on existing immunization programs and their accompanying problems. Literature search methods included search queries, in the form of a set of keywords «vaccination/vaccine», «immunization», «anti-vaxxers», «pandemic», «public health» followed by full-text sources, Web of Science, Scopus, MedLine, The Cochrane Library. In the information retrieval systems, the analysis of the results was carried out, taking into account full compliance with the specified criteria of search among documents and sites. Unlike most medicines, which have limited benefits, vaccines prevent serious diseases and their public health consequences. Immunization outcome is determined by assessing the impact directly on the vaccinated person, indirectly on the unvaccinated community. The success of immunization depends on a level of universal coverage sufficient to interrupt pathogen transmission. Declines in immunization coverage will lead to a resurgence of diseases and new outbreaks with significant gain in the morbidity and mortality rate. In many cases, refusal to vaccinate is the result of people listening to beliefs and copying the behavior of others. An important consequence of this misperception is the potential involvement in the spread of an infectious pathogen due to the false belief that “vaccination is harmful”. Thus, ensuring the success of the continuity of immunization programs is the responsibility of citizens, health professionals and government, among others.