Department of Community Health, University of Ghana Medical and Dental School, College of Health Science, Accra, Ghana.
GA East Hospital, Accra, Ghana.
Front Public Health. 2023 Sep 15;11:1230492. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1230492. eCollection 2023.
Immunization remains one of the most cost-effective health interventions. However, there are still issues of vaccine hesitancy especially in caregivers who are required to protect their children from vaccine-preventable diseases. This thwarts the overall vaccine coverage in disease-endemic areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, to determine the factors that promote vaccine hesitancy in caregivers, this study sought to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices of caregivers on childhood immunization in Okaikoi, a sub-metro of Accra in Ghana.
A cross-sectional study on childhood immunization was conducted to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of caregivers. A total of 120 caregivers with infants aged 12 months to 23 months were interviewed with a structured questionnaire containing open-ended and closed-ended queries.
From the community, infants whose caregivers had adhered completely to immunization constituted 53.3% while the rest were partially immunized. The two main deterrents to complete immunization were time constraints (25.8%) and forgetfulness (17.5%). It was observed that vaccination uptake and maternal level of education, as well as vaccination adverse reaction, did not impact the completion of the EPI program by these caregivers. Unfortunately, it was noted that caregivers with higher education levels were unable to complete their vaccination schedules due to their busy work schedules. Nonetheless, the main deterrent to adhering to complete childhood immunization was poor maternal knowledge (58%).
The study revealed that, the caregivers in the community had poor knowledge on vaccination and its benefits, and therefore, with no strict adherence to vaccination schedules. This promoted the incomplete immunization of children in the community by their caregivers. Also, since the main source of information with regard to immunization in the sub-metro was through the antenatal and postnatal child welfare clinics and the media, we recommend that the health workers collaborate with media personnel to ensure that standardized information is disseminated.
免疫接种仍然是最具成本效益的卫生干预措施之一。然而，在需要保护儿童免受疫苗可预防疾病侵害的照顾者中，仍然存在疫苗犹豫问题。这阻碍了疾病流行地区（如撒哈拉以南非洲）的整体疫苗接种覆盖率。因此，为了确定促使照顾者对疫苗产生犹豫的因素，本研究旨在评估加纳阿克拉郊区奥卡伊科伊的照顾者对儿童免疫接种的知识、态度和实践。
进行了一项关于儿童免疫接种的横断面研究，以确定照顾者的知识、态度和实践。共采访了 120 名照顾者，他们的婴儿年龄在 12 个月至 23 个月之间，使用包含开放式和封闭式问题的结构化问卷。
从社区中，完全遵守免疫接种的婴儿的照顾者占 53.3%，其余的则部分免疫接种。完全免疫接种的两个主要障碍是时间限制（25.8%）和健忘（17.5%）。观察到疫苗接种率和母亲的教育水平以及疫苗接种不良反应并没有影响这些照顾者完成 EPI 计划。不幸的是，由于工作繁忙，注意到教育程度较高的照顾者无法完成他们的疫苗接种计划。尽管如此，坚持完成儿童免疫接种的主要障碍是母亲知识水平差（58%）。
该研究表明，社区中的照顾者对疫苗及其益处的知识不足，因此没有严格遵守疫苗接种时间表。这促使社区中的儿童疫苗接种不完全。此外，由于关于该郊区免疫接种的主要信息来源是产前和产后儿童福利诊所和媒体，我们建议卫生工作者与媒体人员合作，确保传播标准化信息。
