Peer-reviewed article
Full Immunization Coverage and Associated Factors among Children Aged 12-23 Months in a Hard-to-Reach Areas of Ethiopia
Abadi Girmay, Abel Fekadu Dadi ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study measured vaccination coverage among children aged 12-23 months in a remote district of Ethiopia. About 77% of children were fully immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. The research identified key factors that increased vaccination rates, including mothers' antenatal care visits, maternal education, knowledge about immunization, and living close to health facilities. Larger family size was associated with lower vaccination rates.
Key points
- 77.4% of children aged 12-23 months in Sekota Zuria district were fully immunized
- Antenatal care visits increased odds of full immunization by 2.75 times
- Mothers' good knowledge on immunization increased odds of full immunization by 3.70 times
- Short distance to health facility increased odds of full immunization by 2.65 times
- Families with five or more members had 38% lower odds of children being fully vaccinated
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study that describes associations at a single point in time but cannot establish causation. The study is limited to one hard-to-reach district in Ethiopia and may not be generalizable to other settings.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Childhood immunization averts 2.5 million annual child deaths globally. However, poor monitoring, possibly due to a lack of locally available data on immunization, might affect full protection of vaccines from Vaccine Preventable Diseases. This study was aimed at bringing data about immunization service coverage and its associated factors from Sekota Zuria district, which is one of the hard-to-reach areas in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from September 20 to October 28, 2017, among 620 children aged 12-23 months in seven randomly selected rural kebeles of Sekota Zuria district. Socio-demographic child conditions and vaccine-related data were collected using a pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was carried out to identify factors associated with immunization coverage at a p-value ≤ 0.05. Crude and Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) with their confidence interval were reported. RESULTS: 77.4% (95%CI: 74.0%-80.6%) of children aged 12-23 months were fully immunized. Having antenatal care visit (AOR=2.75, 95%CI: 1.52-5.0), higher level of maternal education (AOR=2.39, 95%CI: 1.06-5.36), mothers' good knowledge on immunization (AOR=3.70, 95%CI: 2.37-5.79), short distance to health facility (AOR=2.65, 95%CI: 1.61-4.36), and being born in health institutions (AOR=2.58, 95%CI: 1.66-3.99) had increased the odds of full immunization coverage while having five and more family size reduced the odds of children's vaccine uptake (AOR=0.62, 95%CI: 0.38-0.99). CONCLUSION: Full immunization coverage of the district was lower than the target set by the World Health Organization. Improving mother's health seeking behavior toward pregnancy follow-up and enhancing mothers' knowledge on child immunization, strengthening outreach services, community engagement, and actively working with local community-based health agents are recommended to increase number of children to be vaccinated.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
Problem
Low immunization coverage against vaccine-preventable diseases in hard-to-reach areas of Ethiopia
- Intervention
- Identification of factors associated with full immunization coverage to inform targeted interventions
- Population
- Children aged 12-23 months in rural kebeles of Sekota Zuria district, Amhara Region, Ethiopia
Key finding
Full immunization coverage was 77.4% (95% CI: 74.0%-80.6%), below WHO targets
Girmay et al. · OpenAlex · 27 May 2019