Immunisation in a curative setting.

ABSTRACT

PIP: The objective of this study was to explore the uptake of vaccinations offered to women and children attending a curative health facility. The design was a prospective survey of over 8 months of uptake of vaccinations offered to unimmunized women and children attending a diarrheal treatment center as patients or attendants. The setting of the study was the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The subjects of the study included an estimated 19,349 unimmunized women aged 15-45 and 17,372 children attending the Center for treatment or accompanying patients between January 1 and August 31, 1989. The number of women and children who were unimmunized or incompletely immunized was calculated and the % of this target population accepting vaccination was recorded. The results were: 7530 (84.2%) of 8944 eligible children and 7730 (40.4%) of 19,138 eligible women were vaccinated. Of the children 66.8% were boys, 75.9% were aged under 1 year and 23.0% were aged 1 and 2 years. The estimated number of missed opportunities for vaccination was 716 among the children (8.0% of the target population) and 11,408 among the women (59.6 of those eligible). The conclusions were that it was possible to establish immunization services at a health facility treating acutely ill patients (Author's modified).