VACCINATION COVERAGE IN THE DISTRICTS OF THE CITY OF CASTELLON (SPAIN) AND THE RELATION WITH SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS - AN ECOLOGIC STUDY

BACKGROUND: The state of vaccination in 1987 of those born in the city of Castellon and the relation with a group of sociodemographic variab les by districts collected from a study based on the census of inhabit ants of 1986 was analyzed. METHODS: The state of vaccination of each c hild was obtained from the Computerized Municipal Registry of Vaccinat ions with good vaccination being considered when the child had receive d all the doses corresponding to the age of two years (four doses of o ral trivalent poliomyelitis and three doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pert ussis and one dose of diphtheria-tetanus and one dose of triple virus) and was considered as badly vaccinated when one of the doses had been missed. Following classification of each child according to the distr ict of residence, the effect of the state of vaccination, the sex of t he child and the month of birth as well as the group of variables coll ected in the district (ecologic base), the relative risks were estimat ed by logistic regression analysis. RESULTs: Neither the sex of the ch ild nor the month of birth had any relation with the risk of being bad ly vaccinated. Upon analysis of the effect being born in a determined district had, five presented between two and four times less risk of b ad vaccination than that taken by reference (La Vila) and another thre e presented up to two times more risk. Among the significant predictor s of risk of bad vaccination the following were found: crowding, old a ge, rate of dependence, rate of widowhood, and the proportion of singl e people, while the percentage of active women and the density of popu lation were protective. In multivariant analysis, only the proportion of single people and the number of active women persisted as significa nt predictors. CONCLUSIONs: Although great inequality has been reporte d in vaccination coverage among the districts of the city of Castellon , the general coverage of the city may be considered as satisfactory i n the light of the criteria used and from comparisons with other simil ar studies. The associations found between bad vaccination and some so ciodemographic variables by districts (proportion of single people, an d active women) together with possible methodologic limitations, do no t allow the important inequalities found to be satisfactorily explaine d.