Letters to the Editor Indian Pediatrics 2005; 42:401-402 |
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Immunization Status of Children in Goa |
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The study sample consisted of 362 children with 12 children from each cluster in 12-23 months age group. A child was said to be fully immunized if he/she had received one dose of BCG, 3 doses of OPV and DPT and one dose of measles at the end of 12 months age. Anything less was considered as partial immunization and if the child had not received any immunization, he was considered as unimmunized. The immunization coverage for Goa can be summarized as 85.35% children fully immunized, 11.87% children partially immu-nized and 2.76% children unimmunized. The coverage for individual vaccines was BCG (94.7%), OPV1 (96.7%), OPV2 (95.8%), OPV3 (9o.6%), DPTl (96.1%), DPT2 (95%), DPT3 (90.6%), Measles (88%), Hepatitis B (19%), MMR (5%). The immunization coverage levels by individual characteristics are presented in Table I.
The main reasons for non immunization were found to be lack of information and obstacles to immunization. The results of our study are comparable to some of the other recent studies in Goa who found a similar coverage(2,3), but were in sharp contrast to the reported figures of 100% coverage by the Health Services(4). This shows that the reported figures are a gross overestimation of the actual immunization coverage. This also stresses the need for coverage surveys from time to time to assess immunization coverage instead of relying on the reported coverage. In our study we found that children with high birth order, Muslim religion, those residing in rural areas, children with low parent education and socioeconomic status and those from high household size had significantly low immunization coverage levels compared to children from other groups (P <0.05). Also a trend analysis showed improvement in immunization status with improvement in parent education, socio-economic status and decreasing family size. Ashwin Dalal, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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