EVALUATION OF IMMUNIZATION AND VACCINE COVERAGE IN CHILDREN AGED 0-7 YEARS

Background: Immunization is the procedure of administering a vaccine to protect a person from life-threatening disease. Vaccines contain a form of the disease-causing agent, by UNICEF and WHO, to reduce the death rate among children under ve making vaccination accessible to all eligible individuals. To nd out the unimmunized and partially immunized children among study popul Objective: ation and assess the reasons for this. This is a cross-sectional study carried out in the paediatric OPD at SVRRGGH, Tirupati for a Methods: period of 3 months among 160 children. Data was collected from the mothers of these children using structured proforma and analysed by using MS excel and SPSS. In Results: the study, 69 (43.13%) were male and 91 (56.87%) were female children. The mean age of the children was 3.5 years & SD=2.16. Immunization status of under 7 years children is 132 (82.3%) were fully immunized, 24 (15%) were partially immunized, 4 (2.5%) were unimmunized. Among 160 participants, age and gender association were found to be statistically signicant (p<0.05) with the immunization status and vaccine coverage of the children. In our study most of children were fully immunized, but still there were partially Conclusion: and unimmunized children and with delayed vaccination.