Vaccination Coverage and Associated Factors among Children in Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Vaccination is a proven tool to prevent and eradicate communicable diseases. It can prevent more than 2.5 million child deaths each year. However, many children are still left unvaccinated and still die from communicable diseases in developing countries. Hence, this study was conducted to assess the vaccination status in children at Debre Berhan town, Ethiopia. A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out from June 2017 to September 2017 in Debre Berhan town. A total of five kebeles were included in the study to collect data from 621 study participants. The data were entered into EPI-Info version 7 and analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical software. Only 73% of children were fully vaccinated. Vaccination for oral polio 0, pentavalent3, and measles was done in 47.3%, 79.7%, and 72.6% of the children, respectively. About 19% of the children did not receive any vaccination. The dropout rate for Bacillus Calmette Guerin to measles, pentavalent1 to pentavalent3, and pneumococcus vaccine (PCV) 1 to PCV3 was 10.7%, 1.8%, and 0.6%, respectively. In multivariable analysis, mother's educational status (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 0.102; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.022-0.487), distance from the vaccination site (AOR: 4.669; 95% CI: 1.498-14.547), number of antenatal care (ANC) visits (AOR: 4.472; 95% CI: 1.209-16.543), and income of mother per month (AOR: 2.192; 95% CI: 1.112-4.323) were associated factors for unsuccessful vaccination. The vaccination of children was still low in Debre Berhan town. Distance, family income, education, and number of mothers' ANC visit were associated factors for the low coverage of vaccination. Health intervention programs including encouraging awareness of the community is important to achieve the recommended vaccines among children.

Individual and community-level determinants of childhood vaccination in Ethiopia

“…A higher percentage of vaccination coverage was found among children belonging to a higher wealth index as compared to their counterparts. This confirms previous findings where the odd of childhood vaccination increase with an increase in family income [ 12 , 14 , 15 , 27 , 37 , 44 ].…”

“…The level of parental education positively associated with child vaccination, children born from educated parents were more likely to vaccinate as compared with children born from none-educated counterparts. This supports previous findings where a higher level of maternal and father education is associated with a higher odd of child vaccination [ 12 , 14 , 15 , 35 – 38 ]. The potential reason for this might be the fact that the educated parents may have knowledge of vaccination and child protection and may benefit from full vaccination for their children.…”

“…A higher percentage of vaccination coverage was found among children belonging to a higher wealth index as compared to their counterparts. This confirms previous findings where the odd of childhood vaccination increase with an increase in family income [12,14,15,27,37,44]. This could be because children with the lowest family income status have been disadvantage and health services have been difficult to access.…”

“…As opposed to those who do not attend health facilities, women who visit health facilities have access to or are exposed to sexual and reproductive health services [ 40 ]. Similarly, Increase the number of antenatal visits during pregnancy raises the odds of being fully immunized, a finding that is also confirmed by previous researches [ 12 , 14 , 15 , 35 , 39 – 43 ]. A woman provides not only professional care but also advice and education to use postnatal care and vaccination services during institutional delivery.…”

“…Various studies have been conducted to identify the determinants of childhood vaccination in different developing countries including Ethiopia [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. These studies investigated the determinants of vaccination coverage through binary logistic regression analysis.…”