KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND ACCEPTANCE OF PARENTS TOWARDS COVID-19 VACCINATION FOR CHILDREN UNDER 12 YEARS OF AGE

Introduction: The Covid-19 had a significant impact on the health of both adults and children; the number of cases and deaths among children was quite high. It was acknowledged that vaccines were the most effective way to prevent the Covid-19. The parents have expressed their interests in the Covid-19 vaccination campaign for children aged from 5 to 11 years of age. The research purposes were: 1) To determine parents’ acceptance rate of the Covid-19 vaccination for children aged from 5 to 11 years of age; 2) To investigate knowledge and attitudes of parents about the Covid-19; 3) To examine association among information, knowledge, and attitudes of parents towards the Covid-19 vaccination for children aged from 5 to 11 years of age.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted on 388 parents with children aged from 5 to 11 years of age; undertaking online self-report fortmat from May to July, 2022. Data analysis, using SPSS 25.0 software, analytic statistics with Binary logistic, odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval were used to report the relationships

Results: The acceptance rate for children receiving the Covid-19 vaccine was 72.4%. Parents with knowledge and attitudes were at the moderate level, accounting for 56.7% and 52.3%, respectively. In all three knowledge levels, the parents who gave incorrect answers were nearly 50% of the questions: “the Covid-19 vaccine should be given alone and not combined with other vaccines; reduce the effect on which cases; future health problems; the relationship between influenza vaccine and Covid-19“. For attitudes, there were parents who choose “no” accounting for nearly 50% of all the sentences: “If the vaccine is not available in Vietnam, you are able to ask for it from another country which has it; and accept to participate in vaccine testing trial, voluntary“. Parents with high knowledge and high attitudes accounted for high rates of vaccination acceptance for their children (OR = 0.081; 95% CI: 0.033 – 0.201; OR = 0.023; 95% CI: 0.009 – 0.059 with p < 0.05).

Recommendations: In order to increase level of knowledge of the people/parents, closed coordination among organizations was required: 1) Experts needed to provide more in-depth materials on Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines; 2) Medical staffs needed to organize more communication sessions – health education, provide easy-to-understand and easy-to-remember documents, official websites to help them access easily; 3) Educators should incorporate emerging infectious diseases in general, and Covid-19 in particular, for references into teaching contents; 4)Further research should be conducted to broaden population who do not have the ability to approach the internet access to take the survey