Abstract
IntroductionPneumonia is vaccine-preventable, but the increasing death toll resulting from the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa is alarming. Several factors account for vaccine failing to reach every child, besides incomplete vaccine coverage. Most of these include the perceptions of parents/guardians and healthcare providers. Previous studies on the introduction of new vaccines have focused on experimental trials, coverage figures and vaccine efficacy in developed countries. Little is known on the factors which may hinder the implementation process despite the huge challenges this may encounter in developing countries. This study described the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of parents/guardians on pneumonia and immunisations/EPI vaccines; identify predictive parental socio-economic/demographic characteristics that of good knowledge on pneumonia infections, routine EPI vaccines and the PCV-13. Finally, the study described health center personnel perceptions about immunisations.MethodsThe WHO's immunisation coverage cluster survey design was used, involving parents/guardians (n = 205) of children aged 0-59 months and health centre personnel (n = 13) directly concerned with vaccination activities between July-September 2010 in two health districts in Yaounde, Cameroon. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic models were used to analyse the parental/guardian data while the health personnel data was only analysed descriptively using SPSS version 17.0.ResultsOnly 19% of the parents/guardians were aware of the availability of the PCV-13. Logistic modelling identified important associations between parental socio-economic/demographic factors and good knowledge on pneumonia disease burden and prevention.ConclusionAccording to parents/guardians a short and clear message on the dangers of pneumonia and the need for prevention provided to parents/guardians during sensitisation/out-reach campaigns and use of social network avenues would be primordial, if the PCV-13 is to reach every child.
Highlights
Pneumonia is vaccine-preventable, but the increasing death toll resulting from the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa is alarming
The analysis focused on the description of common socio-economic and demographic factors and the associations between parental knowledge about childhood immunisations/EPI vaccines, pneumonia infections and prevention
Parental knowledge-attitudes about pneumonia and opinions on immunisation/pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV)-13: ninety four percent of the participating parents said they knew the types of vaccines their children had taken, while 6% had no knowledge
Summary
Pneumonia is vaccine-preventable, but the increasing death toll resulting from the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa is alarming. Several factors account for vaccine failing to reach every child, besides incomplete vaccine coverage Most of these include the perceptions of parents/guardians and healthcare providers. The development of an efficacious PCV is a major advance in public health, mean vaccination coverage figures in most Sub-Saharan countries have not followed [5, 5]. This paints a vivid picture of the incomplete coverage and underutilization of existing vaccines in many parts of the world, with most of this in resource-poor settings [6,7,8]
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