A community survey of the vaccination status of under-five children in a community in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Regarding vaccine coverage, Nigeria is currently making slow progress despite the previous achievements in immunisation coverage. This is contrary to the World Health Organisation's goal of achieving health equity for all people globally. Operational research to determine the immunisation status of children should be unrelenting. Thus, this study sought to assess the proportion of under-five children who had completed vaccination as well as parental variables associated with the vaccination in a South-southern community in Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study and a multi-stage sampling technique were used to select respondents from the community. Respondents were interviewed using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire. Information related to parents' sociodemographic characteristics, mother's knowledge of immunisation, their children's vaccination status, and the reasons for vaccination were collected and entered into SPSS software. The percentage of children who had received all the required number of vaccines in the routine immunisation schedule was calculated. The proportion of children who had each of the vaccines was also calculated. Mother's knowledge of vaccination was scored based on some questions asked and was further graded into good and poor knowledge. Chi-square test was used to determine the association between parents' sociodemographic characteristics and children's vaccination status. Results: One hundred and seventy (68%) children completed their vaccination. There was a marked difference when the dropout rates from pentavalent 1/pentavalent 3 vaccine (2.7%) and Bacille Calmette–Guerin/measles vaccines (17.9%) were compared. Maternal knowledge (P = 0.00001), maternal parity (P = 0.006), mother's education (P < 0.00001), father's education (P < 0.00001), and father's age (P = 0.0002) were associated with vaccine uptake within the community. Conclusion: Mothers' knowledge and parity, parents' educational status, and the father's age significantly influenced vaccine uptake.