Introduction: Parent’s recall is one of the frequently used sources for information on children immunization history. During the 2018 demograhpic and health survey in Cameroon, parent’s recall was the only source of information for 47% of chidren assessed for immunization coverage. The objective of this study was to determine the validity of parent’s recall for immunization compared with the vaccination card as the gold standard in Yaounde-Cameroon. Methods: A household-based survey was conducted targeting parents of children aged 0-59months who had their children’s vaccination cards. The immunization history of each child was taken based on both parent’s recall and vaccination card. Using the vaccination card as a gold standard, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of parent’s recall were calculated with their corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). The degree of agreement and the kappa statistics between the two methods were calculated using R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18). Findings: When combined for all vaccines, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of parent’s recall were 63%, 60%, 90%, and 23% respectively. Parent’s recall validity and reliability was observed to vary across vaccines. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that validity and reliability of parent’s recall vary a lot across different vaccines and parents recall is not very reliable for immunization status in children. It can be used as the last resort.
Immunization is the most cost-effective health intervention in the world yet, vaccination uptake is still low with less than 50% of children aged 12-23 months fully vaccinated Cameroon. The objective of this study was to estimate the burden of vaccine hesitancy associated with routine EPI vaccines in Yaounde-Cameroon. A two-stage cross-sectional cluster survey was conducted in Yaounde in May-June 2022, targeting parents/guardians of children 0-59 months. Clusters were selected with probability proportionate to size (PPS) and households selection done using a restricted sampling method. Data collection was done using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Data were cleaned using MS-Excel 2019, and analyzed with R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18). A total of 529 participants were enrolled out of 708 visited, giving a non-response rate of 25%. In total, vaccine hesitancy was reported in 137(25.90[22.35-29.80] %), and vaccine hesitancy prevalence did not vary significantly across different households wealth levels (p-value= 0.3786). However, in wealthy households refusal of vaccines (14%) was less than in poorer households (20%). Lack of trust, confidence, and perceived complacency are the leading causes of vaccine hesitancy related to routine immunization in Yaounde-Cameroon. We, therefore, recommend that the burden of vaccine hesitancy should be assessed at national scale and identify sources of misinformation that are at the origin of vaccine hesitancy. Having a clear notion of the effect of social media(Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc,), radio, TV, and other information sources might guide interventions to combat vaccine hesitancy.
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