Determinants of Full Immunization Amongst Children Aged 12-59 Months Born to Adolescent Mothers in Kenya

Abstract

The burden of immunization in third world countries has been a major policy and social issue. For immunization to be completely effective, all the endorsed vaccinations have to be received. In 2018, 19.4 million children below 12 years were not fully immunized. Due to this, VPD account for 12% of the mortality among children under 5 years. The burden of VPD in Kenya is high. Cases of measles are most common among children below four years and tuberculosis is the fourth ranking cause of mortality. Children in Kenya who had been fully immunized was set at 74.9% in 2014 and 2% of children under 60 months had not been vaccinated at all. Kenya is yet to achieve the coverage target of 90% set by the WHO. Studies have shown that most children born to adolescent mothers are not fully immunized. This study sought to identify the determinants of immunization coverage for these children. The study used secondary data from the KDHS 2014 survey. Data for children aged 12 to 59 months was extracted from the main dataset and analyzed in Stata version 14. The outcome of interest was children who have received all the recommended vaccinations. Descriptive analysis was done to obtain the immunization levels among the children after which bivariate and multivariate probit regression technique was done to establish the determinants of full immunization. The results were presented in tables. The results showed that full immunization level was at 66.1% for the whole country. Full immunization was also determined by mother’s occupation, parity and ANC. Adolescents with higher number of ANC visits had reduced probability of their children being fully vaccinated while children with employed mothers and higher parity had an increased probability of full vaccination. The study also recommended sensitization to be done among adolescent mothers with lower parity on the importance of immunization both at community and clinic level. Conclusions and recommendations for policy makers was done based on the findings.