Childhood Immunization

Background:
Statistical data of child health care in Africa Journals recorded over 52% of childhood mortality rate and over 50% of childhood morbidity rate in the past years due to lack of insufficient, inadequate, inappropriate vaccination while World Health Organization (WHO), estimated that about 8-16 million of Hepatitis B virus infection and 2.7-4.7 million Hepatitis C virus infection was recorded through the unsafe injection practices by the health workers.

Setting:
Childhood immunization is an intensifying collaborative government and Public Private Partnership programme and essential part of child health care services design to save the vulnerable children from the attack and menace of Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPDs) including, tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertusis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles, yellow fever, and hepatitis B.

Population:
80302 target group of eligible children.

Project Description:
Control of high occurrence of these diseases among the children age 0-24 months later increases to 0-59 months depend on routine immunization. Other means and strategies have been put to use to improve the childhood immunization coverage in order to reduce the childhood mortality and morbidity, the 4th Millennium Development Goals in Africa.

Results/Lessons Learned:
Data collated from the health facilities where the strategies were administered revealed encouraging immunization coverage at each ward of the local council. 87-90 % coverage of the antigens administered was recorded in a year comparing to the records of routine immunization in the same year.
The following are the strategies used in the year 2006, 2007, and 2008 to support and back-up routine immunization and the above result was recorded.
* Immunization Plus Days (IPDs)
* Reaching Every Wards (REWs)
* Injection safety practices
* Supervisory data management
* Proper management of waste disposal. All this would be discuss in details to the participant at the conference i.e. the step taken to achieve the effective rate of the strategies identified above.