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Abstract
Background: One of the best public health initiatives to lower morbidity and mortality from preventable diseases worldwide is childhood vaccination. Pakistan still struggles to achieve adequate vaccine coverage despite massive international efforts, particularly in rural and underserved regions.
Aim of the study: The aim of the study was to assess level of knowledge, attitude and perceived barriers regarding immunization among parents visited to outpatient department of a public/private sector hospital, Bahawalpur.
Methodology: This is descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative study and held over a period of four months. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling technique. Structured questionnaire were used to collect data from study respondents. Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used for data analysis and level of significance was set as p-value<0.05.
Result: Total 150 parents (mother/father) of under-five children included in the study. As per level of knowledge regarding immunization among the parents of under-five children, 18% demonstrated good knowledge; 22.67% showed average and 59.33% having poor knowledge. On the contrary, regarding attitude of immunization 74.67% reported positive attitude; 19.33% average and only 6% negative. While prime barriers of immunization included physical barriers, personal barriers, psychological barriers, transportation barriers and cultural barriers. Multivariate analysis performed to check association between knowledge and attitude of parents of under-five children related to immunization, job status of study respondents showed direct association with sufficient knowledge with (95%CI= −1.41– − 0.31, p-value=0.02) whereas income status having direct relationship with level of attitude as (95%CI= −0.96– − 0.13, p-value=0.009).
Conclusion: The study demonstrated poor knowledge regarding immunization found among parents of under-five children whereas they reported positive attitude. The most common perceived barriers in the coverage of immunization programs included card lost, confusion of initiation of vaccination, long queues at clinics, irresponsible behavior of family, low importance of vaccination, distance from centre and religious beliefs.