Engaging Private Nursery and Primary Schools to Facilitate Catch - up Vaccination in Kosofe Local Government Area Lagos State Nigeria

Abstract

Vaccination is very important to improve population health throughout life – but despite strong evidence, it is misunderstood and undervalued. Catch-up vaccination aims to provide optimal protection against disease as quickly as possible by completing a person’s recommended vaccination schedule in the shortest but most effective time frame. This descriptive cross-sectional implementation Research was designed to solve problems for Covid–19 recoveries for routine immunization program in private Nursery and primary school in Kosofe Local Government Area Lagos (School-based intervention). The sample size of 135 was adopted with purposive sampling method from the target population. All data were coded, entered, cleaned, and then analyzed using the IBM PSPP. Children that missed vaccination were tracked out more (90) and vaccinated, demand generation with the help of vaccine demand pooling in school for secondary vaccines, the awareness of vaccine-preventable diseases were created more at different schools Parents Teachers Association's meetings. Implementation Research is one of the measures and a component in the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA 2030) designed to achieve the Life course immunization. Creating awareness and sensitization is very important in schools, especially using the power of storytelling for positive change in vaccination uptake. There are parents who can afford to pay for secondary vaccines but don't have the information and there are parents who have the information but can't afford to pay for secondary vaccines due to economic hardship in Nigeria. We recommend that vaccine demand pooling in schools is championed to enable parents to afford secondary vaccines for their children. Keywords: Catch-up immunization, demand generation, life course, vaccine-preventable diseases, zerodose children.