The myth of mass refusals to vaccinate has been debunked. Paweł Grzesiowski reveals real numbers

All mandatory vaccinations are implemented at the level of 89-95%. – Chief Sanitary Inspector Paweł Grzesiowski told PAP. About 5-10% of each vintage. children in Poland are not vaccinated – according to the analysis of vaccination cards.

GIS checked 7.3 million vaccination cards

GIS reported that from April to the end of July 2025, employees of 318 district stations and 16 provincial stations, with the support of vaccination points, reviewed a total of over 7.3 million vaccination cards. The results are preliminary because they do not include 500,000. cards that are still being verified. This means that the final vaccination rates may be higher.

Grzesiowski said that based on the first part of the inspection of vaccination cards, it can be concluded that vaccinations in the first five years of a child's life are at a very high level.

Poles are getting vaccinated

– Virtually all mandatory vaccinations are carried out at the level of 89-95 percent. This is the national average – he pointed out.

– It turns out that approximately 5-10% of each vintage. children in Poland are not vaccinated, some of them for medical reasons. We initially estimate that approximately 4-5 percent are not vaccinated due to lack of parental consent – he emphasized.

GIS reported that every year, in a given age group, there is a similar percentage of unvaccinated children.

Anti-vaccine propaganda is not as strong as everyone thought

– The propaganda of anti-vaxxers that the number of people refusing vaccinations is growing every year, that Poles are against vaccinations – is absolutely untrue. We have this very strongly confirmed, he said.

– After examining vaccination cards, we can say that each year there is a similar percentage of unvaccinated children in a given age group. If we assume that we have 5%. unvaccinated children due to parents' refusal to do so, with the number of births per year approximately 250-300 thousand. means approximately 10-15 thousand unvaccinated children per year. The accumulated data from 18 years may amount to approximately 200,000 in total. unvaccinated children aged 0-18 – Grzesiowski told PAP.

He emphasized that these are not completely unvaccinated children. – We classified a child as unvaccinated if he or she had not received at least two vaccinations for at least a year from the expiry of the date in which he or she should have received the vaccination. If a six-year-old did not receive a booster vaccination, we did not classify it as a case in which parents refused to vaccinate their child. We marked such cases as “to be clarified,” he said.

Number of unvaccinated people? “Data presented incorrectly”

Grzesiowski emphasized that the numbers of unvaccinated children presented, among others, by the National Institute of Public Health National Institute of Hygiene – National Research Institute were incomplete and presented in an incorrect manner. – The charts showed cumulative data, i.e. the number of unvaccinated children in a given year was summed with data from previous years without verification. Therefore, the charts were suggestively increasing, but did not reflect the actual trend – said GIS.

According to GIS, taking into account the vaccination of 18 age groups of children, it can be said that Polish society is immune to 12 diseases covered by mandatory population vaccinations. He added that there are regions and voivodeships where the implantation rate is below 90%. He noted that the missing data are still being verified, so the final vaccination rates may turn out to be higher.

– Taking into account the information we have, we can assume that we have maintained population immunity in most of the diseases against which we vaccinate. The most difficult situation is regarding vaccinations against rubella, measles and mumps in the eastern voivodeships from Podlasie through the Lublin region to Podkarpacie. Vaccination rates there are several percent lower than in most of the country, he said.

Problem with six-year-olds

GIS noted that inspection of vaccination cards revealed a phenomenon of lower vaccination rates – at the level of eighty-something percent – in six-year-olds.

– Children this age should receive two booster vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, rubella, measles and mumps. These are important conclusions, especially for employees carrying out tasks in the field of school medicine, he said. He added that it is very interesting that 14-year-olds are a better vaccinated group than six-year-olds, i.e. at a level of nearly 90%. – This means that children who finish primary school are captured by the system and receive booster vaccinations. In the case of six-year-olds, we must launch systemic activities so that booster vaccinations are carried out before starting school and during the six-year-old's final examination – emphasized Grzesiowski.

Which diseases are we vaccinated against?

Preliminary data from the analysis of children's vaccination cards, provided to PAP, show that the average vaccination rate in the country is: tuberculosis – 95%. (vaccination in the first year of life); for hepatitis B virus – 93%. (fifth year of life); for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough – 89%. (fifth year of age) and 92 percent (18 years old).

In turn, the vaccination rate against poliomyelitis (polio) is 90%. (fifth year of age) and 92 percent (18 years old). For haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) – 89%. (fifth year of age) and 93 percent (18 years old). For pneumococci (invasive infections) – 89%. (fifth year of age). Rotaviruses (second year of life) – 88%. Vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella – 93%. (fifth year of life) and 90 percent (18 years old).

The results of the Supreme Audit Office's audit, published in 2024, showed problems with the implementation of the obligation to vaccinate children and adolescents. The inspected entities did not have accurate data on the number of people who should be vaccinated, how many people were vaccinated, or the number of refusals. In the years 2021-2023, the Supreme Audit Office carried out an inspection at the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, ten district sanitary and epidemiological stations (PSSE) and twenty primary health care facilities (POZ) in the following voivodeships: Łódź, Opole, Podkarpackie, Pomerania and Warmian-Masurian.

Katarzyna Nocuń (PAP)

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