Abstract:
Immunization is one of the major public health interventions of the last three decades that reduces childhood mortality and morbidity. Globally around three million children are saved by vaccination and two million still die due to vaccine preventable diseases each year. Bangladesh has been able to make impressive achievement in terms of reaching children in the first 15 years of the programme, starting in 1979. Despite the continuous concern of all the stakeholders providing immunization services in Bangladesh, the country has never achieved the Universal Childhood Immunization target of eighty percent of children. In Bangladesh valid full immunization coverage of children aged 12-23 months was 56 percent in 2002. The objective of this study was to examine the factors affecting the childhood immunization status of Bangladesh. Secondary data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2004 was used in this study. A total of 2771 children aged 12-59 months were selected from the data set, all were the last child of their mothers. Seven variables were selected under four domains, namely child factor, maternal factor, community factor and programme factor. This study observed 67.4 percent crude complete immunization coverage among the 12-59 month old children. Among seven variables four were found to have a statistically significant relationship with the completeness of immunization coverage. These are the sex of child, maternal education level, residence of child and exposure of mothers to mass media. The study did not find any relationship between immunization coverage of children and mothers affiliation to an NGO, mothers working status and field workers visits to mothers. This study recommends that more emphasis should be given on the field workers household visits with effective supervision, and NGOs working on health related issues should be made more accountable, to address the immunization issues."