Peer-reviewed article
Providing mothers with mobile phone message reminders increases childhood immunisation and vitamin A supplementation coverage in Côte d’Ivoire: a randomised controlled trial
Romance Dissieka, Marissa Soohoo, Amynah Janmohamed, David Doledec ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001A randomised controlled trial in Côte d'Ivoire tested whether sending mothers mobile phone reminders improved childhood immunisation and vitamin A supplementation visits. Mothers who received voice or text message reminders two days before scheduled visits and for missed doses had infants significantly more likely to receive all recommended doses. The intervention increased completion of all five visits from 36% to 58% compared to the control group.
Key points
- Infants whose mothers received reminders were 2.85 to 4.52 times more likely to receive pentavalent and MMR/yellow fever vaccine doses
- Vitamin A supplementation uptake was 5.67 times higher in the intervention group
- 58.3% of infants in the reminder group completed all five scheduled visits versus 35.7% in the control group
- The trial involved 1,596 mothers across 29 health facilities in Korhogo district
- Mobile phone reminders were delivered two days before each visit and twice for any missed doses
Limitations
The study was conducted in only one district of Côte d'Ivoire, so results may not generalise to other regions or countries with different health systems and mobile phone penetration rates. The document does not report on cost-effectiveness, implementation feasibility, or sustainability of the intervention.
Abstract
We conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess the effect of providing mothers with mobile voice or text (SMS) reminder messages on health facility attendance at five infant immunization and vitamin A supplementation (VAS) visits. The study was conducted at 29 health facilities in Korhogo district. Mothers were randomized to receive a voice or text reminder message two days prior to each scheduled visit and two additional reminders for missed doses (n=798; intervention group), or no phone reminder messages (n=798; control group). Infants in the intervention group were 2.85 (95% CI: 1.85-4.37), 2.80 (95% CI: 1.88-4.17), 2.68 (95% CI: 1.84-3.91), and 4.52 (95% CI: 2.84-7.20) times more likely to receive pentavalent 1-3 and MMR/yellow fever doses, respectively, and 5.67 (95% CI: 3.48-9.23) times more likely to receive VAS, as compared to the control group. In the reminder group, 58.3% of infants completed all five visits, compared to 35.7% in the control group (P<0.001). Providing mothers mobile phone message reminders is a potentially effective strategy for improving immunization and VAS coverage in Cote d'Ivoire.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Providing mothers with mobile phone voice or text (SMS) reminder messages two days prior to each scheduled immunisation and vitamin A supplementation visit, plus two additional reminders for missed doses
- Population
- Mothers and infants (n=1,596 total; 798 intervention, 798 control) in Korhogo district, Côte d'Ivoire
Key finding
Infants in intervention group were 2.85 times more likely to receive pentavalent 1 dose (95% CI: 1.85-4.37)