Objective To describe the epidemiological characteristics of contraindications in children routine vaccination, to evaluate vaccination doctors' ability to determine contraindications. Method Using cross-section study, 34 urban and 15 suburb units were selected from 206 Community Health Center (CHC) in Hangzhou, China. Subjects were all children coming to CHCs for routine vaccination. All situations considered to be unsuitable for vaccination were recorded as contraindications. 3 experts were used to classify these abnormal records as true or false contraindications. Then, the multi-analysis was used to find factors related with the rate of false contraindications. Results There were 2801 children with 2969 contraindications in the present study. The prevalence of contraindications was 3.03‰ by dose of vaccines. Cough (24.78%), fever (21.86%) and medication (19.54%) were the most common contraindications in children routine vaccination. Measles-rubella vaccine (MR) (6.78‰), measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) (5.87‰) and hepatitis B vaccine (Hep B) (5.25‰) had higher prevalence of contraindications than other vaccines. According to the evaluation of 3 experts, about 13.53% of contraindications were misdiagnosed by vaccination doctor. The rate of misdiagnosed contraindications was correlated with the sex, age and educational background of vaccination doctor, total dose of vaccination of CHC. Conclusion A portion of children might miss the routine vaccination because of misdiagnosed contraindications. More investigations are needed to report the epidemiological distribution of contraindication in routine vaccination of children.
Keywords: Children; Contraindication; Immunization; Routine vaccination.