A Systematic Review on Factors Affecting Community Participation towards Polio Immunization in Nigeria

Abstract

Several publications have been written and reviewed to urge efforts reducing the rate of infant morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Scientific innovations and research for efficient immunization has been able to reduce the spread of poliomyelitis across the world and make this vaccine preventable disease a history. However, immunization coverage and poliomyelitis disease eradication seems to be cost effective and has continued to falter in Nigeria (Nnenna et al, 2013) due to various factors; attitude, culture, beliefs, religions, politics, economy, conspiracies, boycotts and human suspicions. The main objectives of this study are; to identify the potential factors affecting immunization coverage in Nigeria and provide recommendations towards total poliomyelitis eradication. Four electronic databases including Science Direct, Springer Link, Pub-Med and MedLine were used to access over 52 academic journal articles where detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria were adopted to select various studies related to polio immunization within the Nigerian context, but only 18 were found to be related to the topic and met inclusion criteria, using search engines like Freefullpdf, HotBot and Google Scholar. Studies pertaining polio eradication conducted in Nigeria from 2010-1014 were included in this study. Knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) or community participation in polio immunization had been made priority. The study was carried out from May to September 2014. Further research should explore the factors affecting community participation in polio immunization particularly on parents’ beliefs and attitudes towards poliomyelitis disease as well as design possible plans to engage community leaders achieving total immunization coverage as a whole. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p407