Medicinski vjesnik, Vol. 30 No. (1-2), 1998.
Professional paper
The reasons for hepatitis b immunization rate among medical workers
Nikola Janković
Neven Ljubičić
Nikolina Kovačić
Abstract
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infe ction is a s ignificant public health issue in the world as well as in our country, considering the morbidity and mortality rates , long absence from work and overall treatment costs of the disease and its chronic consequence. As a Medite rrane an country, Croatia belongs to the area of intermediate hepatitis B prevalence, characterized by 20 - 55% prevalence rate and 2 -7% rate of chronic BBsAg cariers. The overall prevalence of HBV infection in Croatia is 13%, with 1.2% o f chronic HBsAg carriers . Althoug vaccination for this risk group is obligatory and the vaccine is available and free of charge, it is believed that still too small a number of medical workers are vaccinated, resulting in the growing incidence of viral hepatitis B in this group. The purpose of this s tudy was to establish the hepatitis B vaccination rate among medical workers as well as their reasons for avoiding immunization. The total of 120 medical professionals in two Zagreb hospitals (60 from e ach one ) have be en examined by means of a questionnaire. The distribution over hospital clinics and departments was essentially equal for both hospitals, with the majority of subjects working at hemodialys is and intensive care units (2 2% and 16%, respectively) . There were 90.6% of female and 9.4% of male examinees and 22.5% of subjects with college education. The vaccination rate s are 33.3% in hospital A and 66.7% in hospital B. The majority of examinees (57% and 72% in two
respective hospitals ) are of the opinion that vaccination complications
occur frequently where as 6 0% , i.e . 57% believe that hepatitis B can be acquired by vaccination. Most of the nonvaccinated subjects fear the complications of vaccination: 72.5% in hospital A and 6 0% in hospital B. The analys is of the data obtained from the medical staff
with highschool and college qualifications leads to the conclusion that they lack knowledge about immunization programme and complications of vaccination and refuse to be vaccinated because they fear complications.
Keywords
hepatitis B; low vaccination rate; medical workers
Hrčak ID:
192152
URI
Publication date:
1.12.1998.
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