Assessment of Adherence to Timeliness and Completeness of the Vaccination Program among Mothers with Children Aged 0-1 Years in South-South, Nigeria

Background and Aim: The incidence of communicable diseases in communities prompted the adoption of vaccination as one of the most cost-effective interventions preventing avoidable sickness, disability and death among under-five children. The purpose of this study was to assess the timeliness and completeness of vaccination uptake among children between 0-1years in Ogbia town.

Materials and methods: A descriptive research design was employed for this study. A sample size of 236 respondents were randomly selected and used for this study. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection and the collected data was analyzed using percentages and means.

Results: The results revealed that the mothers had good knowledge of vaccination with a grand mean score of 3.34 out of 4, and the source of information on vaccination for most of them (92%) was from Primary Health Care centres. As much as 72% of the respondents were of the opinion that they complied with the vaccination schedules (timeliness) for their children either to a very high extent or high extent. Majority of the mothers (68%) also opined that they completed their vaccination schedule. Also, factors reported to adversely affect the uptake of vaccination among the mothers included fear of the side effect of vaccine, as well as the attitude of the health personnel when providing care.

Conclusion: This study concluded that the mothers’ knowledge of vaccination was good, most of them complied with vaccination schedules, completed these schedules and various factors affected their uptake of vaccination. This study thus recommended increased efforts by primary health facility workers to improve mothers’ knowledge of timely vaccination compliance as this helps in effectively mitigating the extent of occurrence of vaccine preventable diseases.