Objective: To establish the effectiveness of a broad offer for tetanus vaccination (ATT), to any person visiting his general practitioner, by evaluating its coverage, acceptance by patients and final vaccination figures.
Design: Intervention study of nonrandom type.
Setting: Primary care.
Patients: 1349 people aged > or = 24 registered with a general practitioner, of which 1048 were user's people.
Measurements and main results: Find out all people seeking primary care if they has been vaccinated against tetanus, recording the next token dosage or inoculating it, according to the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control. We offered vaccination to 90.7% of the user's people, without significant difference as to age and sex groups, and to 70.7% of the registered population. The proposal was rejected by 8.9% of people who need to initiate vaccination. The 17.1% of the population stated that they had been inoculated the whole vaccination cycle, and after the treatment the rate rose to 81.5% of intervener's people.
Conclusion: The broad offer for ATT vaccination to people seeking primary care, whatever the reason is, the final result is 8 patients vaccinated out of 10 of the offer's people. This is an easily measurable example of what can be achieved both with registered population and people seeking primary care if we include preventive programmes and health promotion in the daily medical attention demanded by patients who go to primary care centers.