Data collected for the Canadian Public Health Association indicate that 92% of Canadian parents believe it is important that their children be vaccinated. Similarly, 91% agree that childhood vaccines take pressure off the health care system and 90% think all standard vaccines should be administered to all children. A small proportion of parents (5%) think vaccination is unnecessary because they think vaccine-preventable diseases have been completely eradicated. Although 92% of respondents think the government should fund all vaccinations, 96% indicated that they would pay personally to vaccinate their children.
The majority of parents (59%) are completely confident that vaccination is beneficial, while another 25% are very confident. Reasons cited for a lack of confidence include “you can still contract the disease” (37%), “vaccines cause other problems” (22%) and “vaccines cause bad reactions” (11%).
Disease prevention was most frequently mentioned by Canadian parents as the most important factor in the decision to vaccinate children (21%), followed by physician recommendations (15%), safety (15%) and effectiveness (12%). When asked to rank their level of concern about the seriousness of specific diseases on a scale of 0 to 10, 95% of parents rated meningitis 8 or higher; hepatitis B got that ranking from 84% of parents, polio, 82%. Meanwhile, 93% said their children had been vaccinated against polio, compared with 30% against hepatitis B and 29% against meningitis.
Although parents tended to be much less concerned about the severity of measles, with only 35% according the disease a severity ranking of 8 or higher, 92% said their children had been vaccinated against it. — Shelley Martin, Senior Analyst, Research, Policy and Planning Directorate, CMA
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