Vaccination has been shown to be one of the most cost effective
health interventions worldwide, through which a number of childhood diseases have
been successfully prevented or eradicated. The objectives of this study were to assess
vaccination status of children aged 12-23 months living in a rural area, Kama DistrictAfghanistan,
to identify the factors associated with full vaccination, and common
reasons for non-vaccination. In this cross sectional survey the data were gathered via a
structured pre-tested questionnaire form. Overall responses from 882 of the participants
were analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics 21 Program. Findings were presented in
marginal and contingency tables. Mainly Chi Square test was used with α=0.05 to find
out significance level of differences and then binary logistic regression was used to
assess the strength of association, between full-vaccination status and independent
factors. Vaccination coverage with vaccination card plus mother’s verbal report was
higher than card only coverage and highest for OPV1 (92.3%; 59.3%), followed by BCG
(90.8%; 59.2%), Penta1 (90.0%; 59.3%), OPV2 (87.9%; 57.4%), Penta2 (85.6%;
57.1%), OPV3 (77.2%; 52.7%), Penta3 (73.1%; 51.8%), and it was lowest for measles
vaccine (70.9%; 49.8%). Drop-out rate for major antigens was much higher than the
acceptable level. In total (card plus mothers’ recall) out of 882 children, 69.7% were
fully vaccınated (only card 48.9%; only mothers’ recall 20.8%), 23.0%, were partially
vaccinated (only card 10.5%; only mothers’ recall 12.5%), and 7.3% (from mothers’
recall) were non-vaccinated. Child sex, family size, maternal education, paternal
education, utilization of maternal health services by mothers and existence of mothers’
knowledge on vaccines and vaccination were the common predictors for fully vaccinated
status of the children. The most common primary reason for non-vaccination was family
problems (25.6%), followed by rumors (16.9%), and fear of side effects (16.6%).