Immunization coverage among children in age group of 12-24 months in a block of Darbhanga, Bihar,India

Abstract

Immunization coverage has improved over the past few decades, but the rate of progress is not satisfactory. Globally, this rate has witnessed an increasing trend, the rate of DPT-3 vaccine has increased to 85% in 2017 from 72% in 2000 and 21% in 1980. Methodology: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted between January and March 2021 in few randomly selected villages of Bahadurpur block of Darbhanga district in Bihar,India. The study subjects are included all the children aged 12--23 months old from the Bahadurpur block of Darbhanga. In this study, Bahadurpur block of Darbhanga district was selected.List of villages under the block were listed. WHO protocol for cluster sampling was used for the current study, so 30 villages were randomly selected from the obtained list. From each village, 7 households were selected as per WHO protocol. Hence, the calculated sample size came to210 (30 × 7). Results: A total of 210 children in the concerned age group of 12-23 months were included in the survey. There was a slight male preponderance with a male female ratio of 1.69:1. Mean age of the surveyed children was 16.8 months with a standard deviation of 4.5 months. Median age was 17.5 months. Immunization card was available and presented at the time of survey among majority (97.8%) of the surveyed children. The present study revealed that 82.7% of children were fully immunized by first year of life. Rest 17.3% were partially immunized and only one female child was found to be non-immunized. Conclusion: To increase the immunization coverage, need to continuous monitoring and supervision of immunization site.