Vaccines in the Vaccination Schedule

Vaccination is one of the most effective methods used to enable individuals to develop immunity against certain diseases that can lead to death or permanent disabilities among the active applications in the health sector. The authority to regulate immunization services carried out in our country has been granted to the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Türkiye. The primary objective of the Extended Immunization Program implemented in our country is to ensure that every newborn receives vaccinations according to the scheduled calendar and that children who are unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated are immunized immediately upon identification.

Vaccine Hesitancy

In our country, the “vaccine hesitancy” movement began eight years ago. Initially, cases of vaccine refusal were very few, but they increased rapidly after a court case in 2015 regarding parental consent for vaccination was won and anti-vaccine narratives became frequent in the media. The number of families unwilling to vaccinate their children rose from 183 in 2011 to 980 in 2013, 5,400 in 2015, and reached 12,000 in 2016. By 2018, the number of vaccine refusal cases had reached 23,000. The vaccination rate in Türkiye, which stood at 98 percent in 2016, declined to 96 percent in 2017. In 2017, measles was reported in 85 children nationwide, while in the first three months of 2018, the number of measles cases reached 44. As a result, the measles incidence rate rose from 0.01 per 100,000 population in 2016 to 0.10 per 100,000 today, representing a tenfold increase. If vaccine refusal cases reach 50,000, the likelihood of an outbreak becomes very high. Some of the claims made by anti-vaccine advocates include: that chemical substances in vaccines are harmful to human health, that pharmaceutical companies are motivated by profit, and that protection against these diseases can be achieved naturally through diet alone.

Anti-vaccine narratives have claimed a link between mercury in vaccines and autism, despite numerous scientific studies failing to demonstrate such a connection. To reduce vaccine refusal, vaccines administered worldwide for approximately twenty years and in our country for the past ten years do not contain mercury. However, parental hesitation on this issue persists. Today, claims that diseases caused by vaccines—rather than vaccine-preventable diseases—are being made without any scientific basis and are being disseminated through media. These situation spread rapidly over time and could lead to serious outbreaks of infectious diseases, potentially causing the re-emergence of diseases that have not been seen for years in large parts of the world (such as polio and neonatal tetanus).

World World Health Organization, observing the growing prevalence of vaccine hesitancy, established the Vaccine Hesitancy Working Group in 2012 and continues its research in this area. According to the World Health Organization’s definition, “vaccine hesitancy” refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability. “Vaccine refusal,” on the other hand, is the deliberate decision not to vaccinate at all. Due to the rapid increase and dangerous scale of vaccine refusal cases globally, the World Health Organization placed vaccine hesitancy at the top of its list of ten global health threats for 2019. In response to the sharp rise in vaccine refusal cases in our country, the Ministry of Health has created a website titled “” with the aim of providing accurate and healthy information on vaccination and fostering public awareness.

In combating vaccine hesitancy, it is essential that science conduct scientific studies on the causes of vaccine hesitancy and refusal and propose evidence-based solution. Research has shown that one of the most effective ways to address vaccine-related doubts is for physicians and health workers to establish and maintain good communication with individuals and parents who are to be vaccinated. Furthermore, the use of mass media and social media to inform and raise awareness among the public about the results of scientific studies on vaccines and their effects will significantly accelerate progress in the fight against “vaccine hesitancy.”