OBJECTIVES

To investigate the coverage of the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (23-PPV) in the Chinese urban elderly population and to understand the attitudes, knowledge and beliefs of this population toward the 23-PPV vaccination.

METHODS

A cross-sectional approach was employed to survey the willingness of this population to receive the 23-PPV vaccination. Two thousand 9 hundred 2 six subjects over the age of 60 y were enrolled via a multi-stage random sampling method from the urban community population in Hangzhou, China. The relationships between the variables and the willingness to receive the 23-PPV vaccination were computed as odds ratios (ORs) by multivariate analysis.

RESULTS

Of the participants, 21.77% were willing to undergo 23-PPV vaccination, and 61.65% of the subjects agreed that pneumonia is a serious disease among elderly people. The rate of reasonable perceptions about vaccination, including the perception about vaccine efficacy and safety, among the subjects was below 50%. Only 1.23% of subjects had been vaccinated with 23-PPV, and a similarly low rate was observed for the seasonal influenza vaccine (4.17%). The factors that were independently related to the willingness to receive the 23-PPV vaccine included consensus with the hazards of pneumonia (OR = 1.67, 95% CI: 1.28 - 2.17), the safety of vaccination (OR = 2.00, 95% CI: 1.54 - 2.59), advice about the 23-PPV vaccination from family members (OR = 2.37, 95% CI: 1.39 - 4.40), influenza vaccination history (OR = 2.57, 95% CI: 1.66 - 3.98) and pneumococcal vaccination history (OR = 7.48, 95% CI: 2.4-22.92).

CONCLUSION

The administration of the 23-PPV vaccine among the urban elderly population is not optimistic in China. Emphasis on persuasion from families and the improvement of knowledge about vaccination might encourage elderly people to get the 23-PPV vaccination. Suggestions from physicians did not affect the participants' willingness to get the 23-PPV vaccination in multivariate analysis, but elderly people typically visited the Community Health Center (CHC) in their residential districts, and thus, systematic encouragement from healthcare physicians might be the key to increasing 23-PPV vaccination.