Assessment of missing opportunity of vaccination at primary health care center: A retrospective study

Abstract

Objectives: The study aim is to assess the vaccination status of children under two years old in Al-Asatetha primary health care center / Hilla-Iraq.
 Method: Retrospective study design (Retrospective chart review) was used to assess the missed opportunities of vaccination for children under the age of two years by reviewing their immunization status from medical reports at the primary health care center. The purposive sampling was used to collect the data of 1000 children born from 1-1-2020 to 31-12-2020 through the period from 1 December 2021 to 1 February 2022.
 Results: the finding of the current study showed that the age of children in the selected period (2020-2021) was between11-23 months, the number of children (1-8) in the same family, and almost all of these families reside in urban areas. Regarding the parents’ educational level the high percentage of both fathers and mothers were attained a primary level of education, and most of the fathers were working, while most of the mothers were not work. Concerning the vaccination status the finding showed that the percentage of missed vaccination opportunities reached 61%, and there was a significant positive correlation between vaccination status and (family residence, parental education level, and fathers' occupation) with a P value of 0.01. On the other hand, the number and the order of children in families had an inversely significant relationship with vaccination status at a P value of 0.01.
 Conclusion: the study concludes that numerous factors affect the vaccination rate such as parents' education attainment and awareness, family size, address, and economic status of the family.

Prevalence of missed opportunities of immunization among children below two years attending primary healthcare centers In Baghdad/Al-Karkh

“…This study revealed that the MOI prevalence was increased among children whose families with increasing number and birth order. This finding was in agreement with other studies [21,31,35] . This finding could be due to an increase in caregiver's experience with increasing number of children.…”

“…Among the Iraqi studies, this finding was relatively consistent with previous study conducted in Baghdad (36.4%) [14] , in Diyala province/Iraq (30%) [15] , and that reported by UNICEF-Iraq-Statistics 2015 (28%) [16] . However, our finding was higher than that reported in other previous studies conducted in Baghdad (11-22.3%) [17][18][19] and lower than that reported in other Iraqi Provinces as in Mosul (45.8%) [20] and Babylon (61%) [21] . The present study revealed that 68.4% of the respondents were completely immunized.…”

“…This difference in findings could be related to the ability of the caregivers to provide health care for their children due to their differences in age. Education level of parent is significantly associated with MOI, the higher percentage of incomplete immunization found among children of non-educated parents, this align with other studies [14,18,21,23] . One study conducted in Sudan [28] showed that there was no significant relationship between educational level and immunization status which is not consistent with our finding.…”

“…This finding may be attributed by the inadequate knowledge of the parents toward the national immunization schedules, and healthcare workers were more concerned to follow up the immunization status of infants rather than older children; Furthermore, there is a significant time gap between the administration of vaccines during the initial year of an individual's life and those given in the subsequent year [19,30] . Although the boys have a higher chance of being vaccinated in most of developing countries due to socio-cultural discrimination against the girls, in this study, there was insignificant association between gender and immunization completeness as in other previous studies from different countries [20][21][22][23][24]31]. However, it appears that there was no gender discrimination in immunization.…”

Outcome and determinants of Directly Observed Short-course treatment for tuberculosis patients

“…The highest percent of treatment success occurs in EPTB patients. In Ethiopia, the treatment success rates were 89.2%, 83.3% and 81.9% among PTB+, PTB-and EPTB patients, respectively (Gebrezgabiher et al, 2016), This agreed with another study which revealed that the highest percentage of successful treatment was among PTB (Obaid et al, 2023).…”