Microsoft Word - AMICS-29Jan2013 - Childinfo.org

Introduction: Child Health
Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 is to reduce child mortality by two thirds by 2015.
Immunization plays a key part in reaching this goal. Immunizations have saved the lives of
millions of children in the three decades since the launch of the Expanded Programme on
Immunization (EPI) in 1974. Yet worldwide, there are still 27 million children overlooked by
routine immunization. As a result, vaccine-preventable diseases cause more than two million
deaths every year.
One of the goals of A World Fit for Children is to ensure full immunization of children under
one year of age at 90% nationally, with at least 80% coverage in every district or equivalent
administrative unit.
According to UNICEF and WHO guidelines, a child should receive a BCG (Bacillis-Cereus-
Geuerin) vaccination to protect against tuberculosis, three doses of DPT to protect against
diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus, three doses of polio vaccine, and a measles vaccination, all by
the age of 12 months. The routine immunization schedule in Afghanistan is shown in Table 6.1.
Table 6.1: Routine Immunization Schedule in Afghanistan (children under 5)
Antigen At Birth 6 weeks 10 weeks 14 weeks 9 months
BCG
X
Polio X X X X X
Pentavalent X X X
Measles
X
The Pentavalent vaccine is a combination of five vaccines: diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis
B and haemophilus influenza. Although the Pentavalent vaccine was introduced in Afghanistan in
2009, there has been no change to reflect this in the vaccination card. Therefore, interviewers
recorded only the DPT vaccination during the field data collection.
Vaccinations
Information on vaccination coverage was collected for all children under five years of age. All
mothers or caretakers were asked to provide vaccination cards. If the vaccination card for a
child was available, interviewers copied vaccination information from the cards onto the MICS
questionnaire. If no vaccination card was available for the child, the interviewer proceeded to
ask the mother to recall whether or not the child had received each of the vaccinations, and for
Polio, DPT and Hepatitis B, how many doses were received. The final vaccination coverage
estimates are based on both information obtained from the vaccination card and from the
mother s report of vaccinations received by the child.
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