Knowledge, attitude, and practices of mothers/caregivers towards immunization of children under 5 years of age in Awach Health Centre IV, Gulu District.

Abstract

Introduction: Immunization is a key approach that can be successfully employed to reduce deaths and illnesses among children. Immunization presently averts an estimated 3 million Deaths annually for children aged under five. Uganda Expanded Program on Immunization has a stipulated immunization schedule guideline that should be adhered to for effective immunization of children under five years Objective: The study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices of mothers/caregivers towards immunization of children under five years in Awach Health centre IV Gulu district. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Awach health facility Among 116 participants. The Respondents were interviewed through structured questionnaires. Data were analyzed by Social Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS). Descriptive findings were presented in tables frequencies, percentages and while inferential statistics used a logistic regression test to measure the association between independent and dependent variables. P- Values equal to or less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: A total of 116 mothers/caretakers were enrolled in the study. The results showed that most of the participants (73.3%) had insufficient knowledge of immunization. The majority of the mothers/caregivers (53.4%) had unfavourable attitudes toward immunization. Moreover, the majority of participants (77.6%) had poor practices toward immunization. Mothers/caregivers who attained a secondary or higher level of education were 4.28 times more likely to have sufficient knowledge about immunization than housewives, male children were 3.67 times more likely to favourable attitudes and married mothers 4.28 times. Conclusions and recommendations: A confidence interval of 95% was adopted thus setting significant thresholds at 0.05 implying any threshold less than 0.05 was significant in affecting Knowledge, attitude and practices towards childhood immunization. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant association between knowledge and attitude such as educational level (p=0.003), marital status (p=0.008), and sex of the child (p=0.003). The study recommends that health workers should sensitize the mothers about important and good practices of immunization and the dangers of not following the immunization schedule