Children Immunization in a private air-flight company medical
department (Varig Airlines)
Soares
de Moura A.T.
FRB-Varig Medical
Department, IMS – Rio de Janeiro University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Objectives:
To analyze the vaccine profile of a private company employees’ children. In
Brazil immunization is warranted for the WHO immunization program vaccines.
Although they are offered in all regional Health Centers there are some
failures on child immunization due to logistical and financial difficulties
for working parents to deliver their children to them. Some vaccines such
as Varicella and Hib are not offered on the public units leading to some
failure on the immunization program. Some private enterprises have
their own medical programs that try to overlap those difficulties offering
some health programs to parents at their working places. We intent to
demonstrate the immunization profile among children attending our health
unit that could support the idea of a complementary booster effect on our population
vaccination prevalence indicating a beneficial effect of supplementary
vaccination programs.
Methods:
A descriptive study of a questionnaire applied to all children immunized in
our unit from September 2000 to March 2001. The records registered the
previous immunization status and all the vaccines administered.
Results: 473
children were immunized during the study period. 57% of children derived
from the outpatient unit. 36% of the study group received more than one
vaccine on each visit. Mean age was 45 months (ranged from 0 to 189
months). 87% of children had a complete immunization record according to
the recommendations from WHO including the vaccines that were not offered
free of charge on public units.
Conclusion: The
implementation of immunization programs in private medical departments,
with financial support from major enterprises has a positive effect on the
immunization profile of their employee’s children. There is an increased
benefit for people specially those on the lower socio-economic segment of
the target population.