Parents’ attitudes towards varicella vaccination acceptance in France and Germany: effect of vaccine recommendation and reimbursement (a survey)

Aims To ascertain physicians’ and parents’ attitudes towards varicella vaccination acceptance and to compare them between Germany (G), where routine varicella vaccination is recommended in children, and France (F), where it is not. Methods Study design: cross-sectional pharmacoepidemiological study conducted in pediatric practice. Data included descriptions of the vaccinated children by pediatricians and descriptions of the parents’ attitudes using a self-administered questionnaire. The next five successive children, under 15 years old, vaccinated against varicella were included in the study. Results Six hundred ninety-five pediatricians (F: 186; G: 509) and 2,593 parents (F: 664; G: 1,929) were included in the study. Initially, 7.1% of the German parents and 15.3% of the French parents were reluctant to have their children inoculated with the varicella vaccine (p