Whereas it is a requirement that children have to be on the latest vaccination program, the adults are not legally bound to undergo any vaccination in spite of the many modern-day threatening diseases. Public health officials have for a long time found it hard to convince the adults to undergo vaccination.
According to Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, children are not the only ones who are supposed to be vaccinated. The health officials have numerous vaccines that are meant for the adults and the best thing is to ensure these reach them, reports ABC.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials issued an advisory with the appropriate vaccine guidelines for adults against influenza, hepatitis B and HPV.
The officials note in their report that vaccines uptake amongst the adults is low because of “competing priorities with management of patients’ acute and chronic health conditions” in addition to immunization not being prioritized among the adults and financial difficulty that prevents access to such services.
It is thus no surprise that data shows adults with a health insurance cover had higher chances on being current on their vaccination coverage. They stand two to five more likely to be immunized as opposed to those without health cover.
The CDC also highlights that the physicians themselves may be a barrier to vaccination. The report says that 25% of internists feel it is difficult to follow age-based vaccine recommendations. Another 29% felt medical-based vaccine recommendations was also hard to abide by.
The advisory committee feels that the problem can be overcame by the use of amplifiers such as patient reminders and recalling the patients who either have alerts in electronic medical records or have missing vaccines.
In addition, the government can boost the uptake through funding to make the vaccines affordable.
Schaffner explained that most people who do not face the risk of influenza do not consider adult vaccination to be serious. “These are important to you, and most of these are communicable diseases.”
What are the new changes?
The CDC gas made some adjustments on how the hepatitis B, HPV and flu vaccines are administered. The health agency now recommends that HPV vaccine be given in two doses, five months apart if the first dose was issued before 15 years. For those starting it past 15 years, three doses are recommended.
Adults are also advised to take only two doses of the serotype B meningitis vaccine to be safe against meningitis. In case there is a meningitis outbreak, three doses are recommended.
Patients suffering from chronic liver diseases are advised to take hepatitis B vaccine to keep off liver infection.