The Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Mothers On Immunization at Rukunyu Health Iv Kamwenge District

ABSTRACT According to UDHS (2011), a considerable proportion of childhood morbidity and mortality caused by vaccine preventable diseases. According to MOH 2011, overall, latest coverage data shows that routine immunization coverage remains at only 52 percent of children age 12-23 months being fully vaccinated. It was a cross sectional discriptive study of mothers who were randomly selected from mothers who had brought their children for immunisation during the month of febuary form Monday to Friday.Multistage sampling technique was used in which respondents were first grouped into 5 strata according to ages of their children. Each stratum was then selected and the sum total obtained, from this, simple random sampling was employed whereby the researcher took an appropriate number of pieces of paper and mark them “1” or “2” and ask the participants to pick them at random. The ones that pick “2” participated in the study 383 questionnaires were administered by the researcher and his assistants to collect the data.Compilation, interpretation and anlysis was done and appropriate conclusions were drawn with relevant recommendations. Results revealed that more half mothers( 86.2%) would atleast identify of the immunisable diseases though few(4.0%) would still identify all the eight immunisable diseases by name.More than half of the mothers (63.4%) believed that immunisation is very useful whereas only (30.7%) said that it is useful. Among the respondents, (96.6%) of them had immunisation cards whereas (3.4%) had no card. The researcher noted in conclusion that, mothers’ knowledge about immunisation is low however, they have a positive attitude towards immunisation and they hard good practices on immunisation . The researcher recommended the following;that Rukunyu healthcentre should institute programmes aimed at increasing mothers’ awareness towards immunisation through media, mothers be encouraged to complete immunisation schedule as per the WHO standards, mothers’ beliefs towards immunisation should be discouraged through massive sensitization.