The New Zealand medical journal
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An attempt was made to find the number of confirmed immunisations received by a group of Whangarei four-year-olds. The claims made for the immunisation benefit by each child's general practitioner were compared with questionnaire responses given by the parents of the children. Of 135 parents, 91.1% claimed that their child had received all four early childhood immunisations. ⋯ These findings suggest that many children miss one or two immunisations rather than a few missing most. Present methods of monitoring may therefore tend to over-estimate the level of full immunisation. Computerisation of immunisation data is proposed as an alternative.