Introduction and objective: The improving epidemiological situation of the most of communicable diseases causes, that the real and potential risks attributable to them have been forgotten. The aim of study was to determine the mothers knowledge about vaccine preventable diseases
Materials and methods: A survey was conducted among 177 randomly selected mothers. The interviews with mothers hospitalized after childbearing in two hospitals in Krakow and Myslenice were conducted at the end of 2014 and in 2015
Results: The assessment of risk to develop an infectious diseases in unvaccinated children significantly varied among mothers. Individual respondents claimed that the risk does not exist regarding each of considered disease. The highest percentage of that kind of answers was related to poliomyelitis – 3.9% of mothers assessed that unvaccinated children have no risk to become ill. The similar percentage of respondents assessed a risk as remote probable regarding poliomyelitis, pertussis and hepatitis A - 16.8%, 15.2% and 16.3%, respectively. The highest risk was attributed to varicella – 50.6% mothers gave that answers. Mothers could not state a risk of disease developing mostly with regard to poliomyelitis, diphtheria, hepatitis A and pertussis – 42.7%, 38.2%, 33.7% and 33.2%, respectively. Relatively high percentage of respondents stated a mild course of that kind of diseases like varicella, mumps, rubella, infectious diarrhea and measles - from 17.4% with respect to measles to 34.3% regarding varicella. To life-threating category mothers primarily included sepsis (74.2%), meningitis and tick-borne encephalitis (each obtained 68.5% answers)
Conclusions: Mothers knowledge about vaccine preventable diseases varied depending on the type of disease. The lack of awareness of the risk related to communicable diseases regarded not only those diseases which have not been occurred in Poland for many years but also those ones that still represent significant epidemiological problem. The society too often has an opinion that some diseases like varicella, mumps or rubella are the mild diseases what can conduce to easy withdrawal from those vaccinations
Keywords: communicable diseases; vaccinations; mothers knowledge about vaccinations.