Immunisation of children under 5 years: mothers’ knowledge, attitude and practice in Alseir locality, Northern State, Sudan

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Abstract
Mothers are the major role players with regard to their children’s immunisation. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of mothers of children below 5 years of age with regard to immunisation in Northern State, Sudan. This was a cross-sectional survey which was conducted in three villages in 2016. All mothers having at least one child below the age of 5 years were included. Data were collected by interviews using a self-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were displayed and chi-square test was used to assess associations. A total of 127 mothers of 191 children were included. The mean knowledge score about the names of vaccines/diseases prevented was 3.47 out of 10. The most correctly named vaccines by the mothers were measles (87.4%) and polio (86.6%), whereas the least ones were hepatitis (7.1%) and diphtheria (8.7%). The majority (99.2%) of the mothers had a positive attitude. The mean knowledge score about the timing of doses was 4.12 out of 5. The most correctly timed dose by the mothers was the dose at 6 weeks ‘dose 1’ (96.1%) and the least one was the dose at birth ‘dose 0’ (60.6%). About half (48.7%) of the children were completely immunised, 46% were only missing their ‘dose 0’, mostly because of closed vaccination units on the day of birth (73.6%), and 5.3% were incompletely immunised. Hospital delivery, availability of vaccination card and good socioeconomic status were associated with complete immunisation status, with p-values equal to 0.00, 0.00 and 0.03, respectively. Educating mothers about immunisation, increasing the days of immunisation and providing outreach services for home-delivered newborns are important interventions to increase the immunisation coverage.

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