Maternal education is associated with vaccination status of infants less than 6 months in Eastern Uganda: a cohort study

BMC Pediatrics

Research Article

Thorkild Tylleskär¹  Halvor Sommerfelt²  James K Tumwine³  Victoria Nankabirwa⁴ 

[1] Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway;Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway;Division of Infectious Disease Control, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway;Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda;Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda;Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway;

关键词: Secondary Education;    Primary Education;    Maternal Education;    Vaccination Coverage;    Vaccination Status;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2431-10-92

 received in 2010-06-21, accepted in 2010-12-15,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDespite provision of free childhood vaccinations, less than half of all Ugandan infants are fully vaccinated. This study compares women with some secondary schooling to those with only primary schooling with regard to their infants' vaccination status.MethodsA community-based prospective cohort study conducted between January 2006 and May 2008 in which 696 pregnant women were followed up to 24 weeks post partum. Information was collected on the mothers' education and vaccination status of the infants.ResultsAt 24 weeks, the following vaccinations had been received: bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG): 92%; polio-1: 91%; Diphteria-Pertussis-Tetanus-Hepatitis B-Haemophilus Influenza b (DPT-HB-Hib) 3 and polio-3: 63%. About 51% of the infants were fully vaccinated (i.e., had received all the scheduled vaccinations: BCG, polio 0, polio 1, DPT-HB-Hib1, polio 2, DPT-HB-Hib 2, polio 3 and DPT-HB-Hib 3). Only 46% of the infants whose mothers' had 5-7 years of primary education had been fully vaccinated compared to 65% of the infants whose mothers' had some secondary education. Infants whose mothers had some secondary education were less likely to miss the DPT-HB-Hib-2 vaccine (RR: 0.5, 95% CI: 0.3, 0.8), Polio-2 (RR: 0.4, 95%CI: 0.3, 0.7), polio-3 (RR: 0.5, 95%CI: 0.4, 0.7) and DPT-HB-Hib-3 (RR: 0.5, 95%CI: 0.4, 0.7). Other factors showing some association with a reduced risk of missed vaccinations were delivery at a health facility (RR = 0.8; 95%CI: 0.7, 1.0) and use of a mosquito net (RR: 0.8; 95%CI: 0.7, 1.0).ConclusionInfants whose mothers had a secondary education were at least 50% less likely to miss scheduled vaccinations compared to those whose mothers only had primary education. Strategies for childhood vaccinations should specifically target women with low formal education.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Nankabirwa et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.