Ameer Ahmad, Mohammad Naeem, Atta Ullah Mazhar.
Coverage rate of the measles vaccination campaign and the causes of drop outs.
Pak Paed J Jan ;33(2):86-91.

Objective: To determine the coverage rate of the measles vaccination campaign and the causes of drop outs. Study Design: Observational cross-sectional study conducted in the month of May 2008 at the paediatric unit-1 Bahawal Victoria hospital Bahawal pur. Patients and Methods: The patients admitted in the ward in the age range of 9 months to 13 years were included in the study. A Proforma was filled for each patient. This contained information regarding age, sex of the patient, educational status of parents, whether the child was given injection of measles vaccine during the campaign from March 17 to April 3, 2008 or not and reasons for not giving the injection. All this information was entered into the computer and SPSS version10.0 was used to analyze the data. Results: Total 258 patients were included in the study with male to female ratio of 1.8:1.0. Mean age was 4.5 years. One hundred and thirty two children were given measles injection with coverage of 51% of the studied population. Out of 126 children not vaccinated during campaign, 55(43.5%) parents thought that child was already fully vaccinated. This reason was statistically significant in educated parents (p-value<0.05). Seventeen (13.5%) parents said that they did not know about the campaign. This reason was statistically significant in un-educated parents (p-value<0.05).Thirty one (24.6%) parents said that vaccination team did not reach them during the campaign. Conclusion: Significant number of children missed measles vaccination during the campaign. Increased efforts are needed to make the public (both educated and uneducated) aware of such campaigns.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com