DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i01.034

Pages: 154-156

It has been recently reported by WHO that a large proportion of children fail to complete their immunization schedule. Parental decisions regarding immunization are very important to improve immunization rate. The aim of this study was to evaluate the parental knowledge, attitude and practices about children's immunization completeness. A cross sectional survey of non-randomized sample of 160 mothers of the newborn children was included in the study. Mothers attending the pediatric department of the Andaman and Nicobar Institute of Medical Sciences (ANIIMS) hospital over a period of 6 months from Nov 2016 to May 2017 were included in the study and Mothers having their children of 0 to 24 months were considered for the study. All the participants were given a format of questionnaires to tick for the assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice of the parents. Statistical analysis was done by using IBM SPSS statistics version 16 with the help of chi-square test and 0.05 was used as a level of significance. A total of 160 participants were included in the study. Out of these, 131 (81.87%) completely immunized their children whereas 29 (18.12%) mothers partially immunized their children. Eighty female and eighty male children were recorded in the study i.e. a ratio of 1:1. It was found that residence affect at certain level on the status of immunization (p<0.05). Knowledge of prevention of disease by vaccination was present with 126 mothers out of 160. The concept of the active and passive immunization was not known to 106 and 101 mothers, respectively. Also the knowledge of health situations and schedule follow-up was lacking in some of the mothers. Many of the parents still lacked the knowledge of the immunization. Childhood immunization related messages should be more emphasized in the national vaccination programme.