Factors Affecting Timeliness of Immunization Coverage Among Children of Assam, India: A Cross-sectional Study

This article attempts to estimate timeliness of vaccination coverage and to model the pattern of timeliness of vaccination using techniques of survival analysis in order to trace the determinants of age-appropriate immunization status of children. Multistage cluster sampling has been used to collect information on immunization and other related variables using a pre-tested questionnaire from the universe of children of age between 12 and 36 months of two districts of Assam, India. At first, the Kaplan–Meier product limit estimator has been applied to estimate the age-appropriate immunization coverage. Though the immunization coverage as a whole is quite satisfactory in the study area, the Kaplan–Meier estimator shows poor age-appropriate immunization coverage which necessitates studying the impact of different demographic and socio-economic factors on this problem. In this context, the Cox proportional hazard model has been used which is found to be a good fit. The findings of this model show that education of mother, caste, religion and socio-economic status of the family have significant impact on the age-appropriate immunization coverage of children. Thus, it can be concluded that though the child immunization coverage in Assam has been inclining, there is still a lot of concern over the timeliness of vaccination coverage.
Source: Journal of Health Management - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research