Vaccinations against respiratory infections in Arabian Gulf countries: Barriers and motivators

Alqahtani, Amani S; Bondagji, Daniah M; Alshehari, Abdullah A; Basyouni, Mada H; Alhawassi, Tariq M; BinDhim, Nasser F; Rashid, Harunor

The overall uptake of influenza vaccine was suboptimal, as we found that only 17% (300/1812) of the participants had the vaccine. Our findings are com parable to the rate (17.8%) found among Saudi military personnel in Riyadh in 2009 [35] , and even higher than the uptake among Saudi Arabian Hajj pilgrims (4%) [36] . However this uptake rate is much lower than the coverage rate among HCWs in GCC countries which ranges between 19% and 72% [18, 20, 21, 37, 38] . More stringent vaccination requirement for the workers applied in health care settings in some GCC countries explain higher uptake among HCWs. Similar requirement exists in other workplace settings leading to increased vaccination rate. For instance, Abbas et al [39] recorded that influenza vaccine uptake rate among the employees of two different industries in Saudi Arabia ranged from 56% to 62% in 20042005 (Table 1) . However, the uptake of influenza vaccine in this study was lower than what was found among adults aged ≥ 19 years resident in the United States (43.2%) [40] , France (26.4%), Germany (28.2%), and the United Kingdom (28.7%) in recent years [41] . Such a discrepancy may have stemmed from the lack of awareness about influenza vaccine which is common among the Gulf people as is evidenced by this study, and is consistent with the studies conducted in other Middle Eastern countries [42, 43] . Low vaccination uptake secondary to lack of awareness has been observed even among HCWs in some GCC countries [21] .