Objective: It was aimed to examine the knowledge levels and attitudes of the parents about childhood vaccinations and the vaccination status of their children, to determine the factors that may affect the vaccination rates, and to investigate the reasons for vaccine hesitancy. Material and Methods: The study was performed by a questionnaire with parents who applied to Ankara City Hospital Children’s Hospital Well Child Clinic in August-September 2020. A total of 150 families were offered a questionnaire. Among these, 17 families did not accept the survey proposal due to reasons such as not having time and not wanting to participate. The questionnaires were filled in by face-to-face interview method after giving information about the study and obtaining consent from the participants. SPSS-25 package program was used for the statistical analysis of the study, and a value of p <0.05 was considered significant. Results: 97.7% of the parents participating in the study stated that vaccination is a necessary practice. It was observed that 93.9% of the parents had complete vaccination for their babies, 47.7% had information about non-routine vaccines, but 17.4% had non-routine vaccines. It was seen that the most known non-routine vaccines was the rota virus vaccine. It has been observed that there is a positive correlation between the mother’s education level and occupation and having non-routine vaccinations of her children (p <0.001). Conclusion: Raising the awareness of families about vaccination, educating healthcare professionals, eliminating the concerns of families and including non-routine vaccines in the vaccination calendar may increase vaccine acceptance.

In Turkey, pneumococcal conjugated vaccine (PCV) was introduced to the national immunization program as PCV7 in 2008, and was replaced with PCV13 in 2011. The aims of this study were to investigate the effects of PCV13 on nasopharyngeal pneumococcal carriage (NPC) by determining the serotype distribution, and to identify risk factors for carriage, in healthy Turkish children. This prospective study was conducted on 500 healthy children aged 0-13 years between April and November 2014. Nasopharyngeal swab samples were taken, and molecular method for capsular serotyping was performed by multiplex PCR. Of 500 children, 43.4% were unvaccinated with a PCV (7- or 13-valent), 56.6% were vaccinated and The NPC rate was found to be 9.8%. Of 49 positive Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates, 26 (53%) were PCV13 vaccine strains (VSs), and 17 (34.7%) were non-VS. Six isolates (12.2%) were not typeable by the method applied. The most common serotypes detected were serotype 3 (18.3%), serotype 19F (14.2%), serotype 6A/B (8.1%), serotype 11A (8.1%), and serotype 15B (8.1%). The total coverage rate of the PCV13 serotypes was 60.4%. A significant decrease in carriage rate was detected within three years after the introduction of PCV13 in Turkey. However, the nasopharyngeal carriage of PCV13 strains was found to be interestingly high.