Knowledge and attitudes of Spanish adolescent girls towards human papillomavirus infection: where to intervene to improve vaccination coverage

Background: HPV vaccine coverage is far from ideal in Valencia, Spain, and this could be partially related to the low knowledge about the disease and the vaccine, therefore we assessed these, as well as the attitude towards vaccination in adolescent girls, and tried to identify independently associated factors that could potentially be modified by an intervention in order to increase vaccine coverage. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in a random selection of schools of the Spanish region of Valencia. We asked mothers of 1278 girls, who should have been vaccinated in the 2011 campaign, for informed consent. Those that accepted their daughters’ participation, a questionnaire regarding the Knowledge of HPV infection and vaccine was passed to the girls in the school. Results: 833 mothers (65.1%) accepted participation. All their daughters’ responded the questionnaire. Of those, 89.9% had heard about HPV and they associated it to cervical cancer. Only 14% related it to other problems like genital warts. The knowledge score of the girls who had heard about HPV was 6.1/10. Knowledge was unrelated to the number of contacts with the health system (Pediatrician or nurse), and positively correlated with the discussions with classmates about the vaccine. Adolescents Spanish in origin or with an older sister vaccinated, had higher punctuation. 67% of the girls thought that the vaccine prevented cancer, and 22.6% felt that although prevented cancer the vaccine had important safety problems. 6.4% of the girls rejected the vaccine for safety problems or for not considering themselves at risk of infection. 71.5% of the girls had received at least one vaccine dose. Vaccinated girls scored higher knowledge (p = 0.05). Conclusion: Knowledge about HPV infection and vaccine was fair in adolescents of Valencia, and is independent to the number of contacts with the health system, it is however correlated to the conversations about the vaccine with their peers and the vaccination status. An action to improve HPV knowledge through health providers might increase vaccine coverage in the adolescents.

La tardía emergencia mediática de la vacuna contra la viruela, cobertura de noticias en prensa española (1999-2004)

Introducción. Las discusiones sobre la necesidad de conservación del virus de la viruela en 1999 pusieron de actualidad una enfermedad erradicada veinte años atrás. El escenario de alarma internacional creado tras los incidentes del 11-S en EE.UU vino a resituar a la viruela como potencial candidata para ser utilizada como arma bioterrorista. La consecuencia directa fue la reactivación de una vacuna que permanecía en el olvido y cuyos destinatarios iniciales eran los cuerpos de seguridad estadounidenses. España también se interesó por adquirir la vacuna antivariólica. El objetivo de este estudio es valorar la cobertura mediática que la viruela obtuvo en nuestro país. Métodos. Revisión sistemática en la base documental Dow Jones Factiva de las noticias publicadas durante el periodo 1999-2004 en los cuatro diarios de mayor tirada nacional (ABC, El Mundo, El País y La Vanguardia), utilizando como palabra clave “viruela”. Se efectuó un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de los datos obtenidos. Resultados. Se analizaron 416 noticias. El Mundo, con un total de 158 (37.98%), fue el diario con más publicaciones. El mayor número de noticias (152, 36,5%) se editaron en 2003, coincidiendo con la adquisición de vacunas por España. El tipo de mensajes emitidos fue variable a lo largo del sexenio, predominando los relacionados con “diplomacia y política”, “riesgo epidemiológico”, “bioterrorismo” y “vacuna”, concentrados en años diferentes. Conclusiones. La alarma creada en torno a la vacunación antivariólica fue un fenómeno mediático que obedeció a cuestiones de estrategia política más que a un problema real de salud pública.

A public-professional web-bridge for vaccines and vaccination: User concerns about vaccine safety

Vacunas.org (http://www.vacunas.org), a website founded by the Spanish Association of Vaccinology offers a personalized service called Ask the Expert, which answers any questions posed by the public or health professionals about vaccines and vaccination. The aim of this study was to analyze the factors associated with questions on vaccination safety and determine the characteristics of questioners and the type of question asked during the period 2008–2010. A total of 1341 questions were finally included in the analysis. Of those, 30% were related to vaccine safety. Questions about pregnant women had 5.01 higher odds of asking about safety (95% CI 2.82–8.93) than people not belonging to any risk group. Older questioners (>50 years) were less likely to ask about vaccine safety compared to younger questioners (OR: 0.44, 95% CI 0.25–0.76). Questions made after vaccination or related to influenza (including H1N1) or travel vaccines were also associated with a higher likelihood of asking about vaccine safety. These results identify risk groups (pregnant women), population groups (older people) and some vaccines (travel and influenza vaccines, including H1N1) where greater efforts to provide improved, more-tailored vaccine information in general and on the Internet are required.