Community Medicine Abstracts - College of Medicine and Health ...

Project No. 235 (2006)Mothers' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Childhood Immunization in Al-AinCity, UAE 2006Student Authors: Fatmah Rashed Saeed Sorour Al-Zahmi, Noura Abduljabbar MohdAl-Ali, Rowayah Obaid Rashed Saeed Hamoudi, Noura Ahmed Ghalib AliFaculty Supervisors: Dr. J. Al Mutawa, Dr. J. Schneider, Dr. M. Grivna, Dr. R.BernsenAbstract:Objectives: Childhood vaccination is one of the most beneficial and cost-effectivemeans of preventing infectious diseases. Parents’ belief and attitudes are importantfactors that influence childhood immunization uptake. With vaccination coverage ofabout 94.3% in 2005 in the UAE, the challenge is how to maintain high levels ofvaccination. In the absence of vaccine preventable diseases, parents may not seethose as a threat. Such an attitude may lead to a drop in the vaccination coverageresulting in epidemics in the future. We believe that it is important to evaluate theknowledge and attitude of mothers towards child vaccination since they are keydeterminants of good vaccination coverage.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among mothers in Al- Ain in 2006,using self-administered questionnaires. Data was analyzed using SPSS.Results: The majority of mothers immunize their children because they believe itprevents against diseases (99%) and due to doctors’ advice (82%). Ninety twopercent of participants know that vaccine preventable diseases (VPD) are serious lifethreatening that better be prevented and 63% of them thought that VPD are not easilytreated. More than half of participants passively receive information regardingimmunization (56%) while only 36% of them receive information actively. The majorsource of their information was the media (52%) while only 29% of them got theirinformation from medical professionals. Knowledge of individual vaccines ranged from80%-22%. The majority of the mothers (88%) were aware of the starting time of theimmunization program. Almost all of the mothers believed that it’s important tocomplete the immunization schedule (98%) and to be on time (92%). Only 1% of therespondents reported that their children are not fully vaccinated.Conclusion: The majority of mothers demonstrated a good level of knowledge aboutthe importance of children immunization. Experience and education are importantdeterminants of the level of knowledge. The media was found to constitute the majorsource of information to mothers. An attitude-practice-gap exits.