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Preventive Medicine 2018
Journal of Preventive Medicine
ISSN: 2572-5483
Page 73
July 16-17, 2018
London, UK
9
th
Edition of International Conference on
Preventive Medicine
& Public Health
Introduction:
Vaccination is one of the most successful and
cost-effective public health interventions. Public confidence
in immunization is critical to sustaining and increasing
vaccination coverage rates and preventing the outbreaks of
vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs). New innovativemethods
involving technologies need to be employed to increase the
vaccine coverage. Technology use is widespread by patients
and providers including text message, email, internet, social
media and electronic health records.
Objectives:
To assess the effect of reminding parents on their
children’s vaccination dates using short message system(SMS)
on the coverage rates of vaccines in the Primary Healthcare
Centers (PHCs) in Baghdad, Iraq, 2015-2016.
Methods:
We conducted this interventional study in six PHCs
that were selected by simple random sampling technique from
all PHCs in Resafa side of Baghdad of 4.8 million inhabitants.
All infants aged less than one year who missed any of the
vaccines enlisted in the national immunization schedule in
these PHCs were considered defaulters and included in the
study. In three PHCs, the parents of those children received
SMS reminders while the children’s in the other three PHCs
were left for the routine defaulter tracing practices.
Results:
There were 1299 defaulter children in the six PHCs
during the study period; 625 infants were in the intervention
PHCs and 674 infants in the non-intervention PHCs. Prior to the
intervention, there was no significant difference in the vaccines’
coverage between the two groups. After the intervention, the
coverage rates among the intervention versus non-intervention
groups were: OPV1 (67.1% vs. 42.9%; p<0.001), OPV2 (58% vs.
47.1%; p<0.0001), OPV3 (67.4% vs. 31.9%; p<0.001), Penta1
(67.1% vs. 42.9%; p<0.010), Penta2 (67.4% vs. 31.9%; p<0.001),
and Measles (69.6% vs. 21.6%; p<0.0001), respectively. The
average cost per respondent defaulted infant was US$ 0.3
Conclusions:
The use of SMS in the PHCs to remind parents
with defaulters’ infants proved effective in improving the
vaccination coverage rates.
dr.ashwaq6@yahoo.comEffect of reminding parents on vaccination dates using mobile
short messages on the routine vaccination coverage of infants
in Al Resafa-Baghdad, 2015-2016
Ashwaq Talib Joodi
and
Faris Al Lami
University of Baghdad, Iraq
J Prev Med 2018, Volume 3
DOI: 10.21767/2572-5483-C1-003