Abstract
Objective The purpose of this is to assess coverage, opportunity and challenges of EPI among children age 12-23 month in Woldia town, Amhara region, Ethiopia.
Result A total of 389 mothers/caretakers were interviewed. Based on vaccination card and mothers/caretakers’ recall, 385 (99%) of the children took at least a single dose of vaccine. About 343 (87.7%) children were fully immunized. Dropout rate was 9% for BCG to measles. Qualitative study revealed that workload, shortage of vaccine and non-compliance of mother/care taker for next schedule date was the major challenge faced by health professionals. In this study, vaccination coverage was low compared to the Millennium Development Goals target. Thus the town health office and concerned stakeholders need to work more to improve performance of the expanded program on immunization in this area.
Abbreviations
- BCG
- Bacillus Calmette-Gurin
- DHS
- Demographic health survey
- DPT
- Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus
- EC
- Ethiopian calendar
- EDHS
- Ethiopian Demographic and Health survey
- EPI
- Expanded Program on Immunization
- GVAP
- Global vaccine action plan
- HEB
- Hepatitis B
- MCV
- Measles containing Vaccine
- MDG
- Millennium development goal
- MOH
- Ministry of health
- OPV
- Oral Polio Vaccine
- PCV
- Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine
- SNNPR
- Southern nation nationality people region
- SPSS
- Statically package for social science
- UNICEF
- United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
- VPD
- Vaccine preventable disease and WHO: World Health Organization