Giving DT vaccine during promotion campaign: Practitioners’ and patients’ knowledge on indication, contraindication, and side effect

Dear Sir,

The remerging diphtheria in Thailand due to imported disease by foreign workers from nearby countries has become an important concern for the local public health system. ^[1] To correspond to the problem, diphtheria and tetanus toxoids (DT) vaccine promotion campaign for the local Thai population has been proposed in 2015. The promotion of this vaccination has been done since early 2015 and mass vaccination has been done. Here, the authors report on the simple survey on the practitioners’ and the patients’ knowledge toward DT vaccine in a medical center that gives service to university staff. All the 12 medical practitioners who had the responsibility of giving DT and the 105 university staff who received DT were surveyed regarding their knowledge. Based on this study, all (100%) the medical practitioners knew the indication of the vaccination while only 52 (49.5%) university staff, the patients knew the indication. Focusing on the contraindication, six (50%) medical personnel and 10 (9.5%) patients knew about it. Focusing on the side effect, six (50%) medical personnel and three (2.9%) patients knew about it. Here, it can be seen that there might be some problems since the poor knowledge of contraindication and side effect of the DT vaccine was observed. Information for both the medical practitioner in the field and the patients is very important, and has to be managed. Indeed, a previous report on medical personnel toward immunization practice by Power et al. showed that “a majority believed their immunization training was less than adequate and believed their practice would benefit from continuing medical education courses.” ^[2] Also, it is noted that having information for the patient to read can improve his/her knowledge about the DT vaccine. ^[3]

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

DOI: 10.4103/1755-6783.159838