Effects Of Childhood Immunization

1. INTRODUCTION

Immunization has been found to be one of the most cost-effective and successful public health interventions in the world preventing close to about three million deaths and averting childhood debilitating diseases. If the current level of coverage is expanded immunization has the potential of saving additional two million lives. Not only this, evidence abounds to suggest that childhood immunization has the ability to indirectly protect adults from infectious diseases through herd immunity. One major step to achieve this is through vaccination.

Immunization coverage remains one of the indicators used to monitor progress toward the reduction of child morbidity and mortality. The Nigerian Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI)

Many factors influence parental decision making on whether they immunize their child or not. For most parents and caregivers, immunization is an emotional issue. In most of the advanced countries where vaccine-preventable diseases is less common and parents have little familiarity with the devastating effects of vaccine-preventable illnesses, the benefits of immunization may seem less important than the potential adverse effects; efforts in such countries have been concentrated on finding the influencing factors and parental hesitancy and refusal of child immunization. Most studies concluded that childhood immunization reflect multiple factors including family lifestyle; perceptions about the child’s body and immune system; perceived risks of disease, vaccine efficacy, and side effects; perceived advantages of experiencing the disease; prior negative experience with vaccination; and social

This present research tends to show that while health care providers are an important part of the immunization delivery process, the perceptions of parents are also important if not most critical. This cross-sectional study is poised to effuse predisposing factors to parental refusal to vaccinate their children against vaccine preventable diseases in Nigeria with special interest in the influence of their perception of childhood immunization.

Research Question

1. How do Nigerian parents perceive childhood immunization?

2. What factors contribute to their perception of childhood immunization?

Objectives of the Study:

Objective 1: To understand how Nigerian parents perceive childhood immunization using a cross-sectional design that involves survey

Objective 2: To examine the socio-demographic risk factors that may be associated with childhood immunization in Nigeria

In achieving these objectives the following are the aims:

• To develop a survey instrument, pre-test, and pilot test the instrument for use in collecting snapshot information on childhood immunization, and to determine whether there is difference in parental perception of childhood immunization across the entire nation

• To administer the instrument to an estimated 450 parents on an assumed representative sample of the six geo-political zones