Cunoştinţele şi practicile mamelor din Sri Lanka privind imunizarea copiilor

Abstract

Vaccination of children is the responsibility of parents, as immunization schedule is issued by the epidemiology unit of the Ministry of Health from Sri Lanka. There are two types of measures when it comes to immunization, know­ledge and practice. The focus of this study is to iden­ti­fy knowledge and practices of mothers towards im­mu­ni­za­tion attended to the Sirimawo Bandaranayke Specialized Chil­dren Hospital, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. The study was con­duc­ted between 8 and 29 January 2021. The data were collected using self-administered questionnaires which consisted of three parts, comprising demographical data, mother’s knowledge regarding immunization, and mothers’ practices regarding immunization. The demo­graphic characteristics were represented by age, civil status, edu­ca­tio­nal level, employment status, language and fa­mily income. This was a quantitative non-experimental de­scrip­tive study. One hundred and thirty-six mothers were selected as the sample size. Findings were analyzed by using Microsoft Excel. Regarding questionnaire marks, 44% of the mothers had marks between 60 and 100 on im­mu­ni­za­tion knowledge, 38% of mothers had marks between 30 and 59, and 18% of mothers had marks between 0 and 29. This stu­dy revealed the poor practice levels of mothers regarding the immunization of children. Thus, 24% of mo­thers had marks between 60 and 100, 30% of mothers had marks between 30 and 59, and 46% of mothers had marks be­tween 0 and 29. This fact reflects that mothers need more educational training on immunization, even in well-de­ve­loped cities from Sri Lanka.