EKWE JONAL

Immunization is one of the most powerful and cost effective of all public health interventions for prevention of communicable diseases. Immunization prevents debilitating illness and disability and saves millions of lives every year. The purpose of this study was to determine vaccine safety and immunization effectiveness concerns of mothers with under five age children in Awka South LGA of Anambra State. Four research objectives and four hypotheses were developed to guide the study. The research design for the study was the descriptive research design. The sample size was three hundred and twelve (312) mothers with children under fivein the selected health centers. A validated researcher-developed questionnaire with reliability coefficient of 0.94 was used for data collection. Data collated were subjected to simple descriptive statistics of frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation and hypotheses tested using chi-square test. Probability value at <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Major findings revealed that a good number of mothers (62.4%) had low concern for childhood vaccine safety, while 37.6% had high concern for childhood vaccine safety. The overall mean score for the mother’s response on concern for vaccine safety was 2.43. A good number of mothers (57.8%) had high concern for childhood immunization effectiveness while the remaining 42.2% of the mothers had low concern for childhood immunization effectiveness, the overall mean score for concern for immunization effectiveness was 2.49, hospital and health centre were major places where mother received antenatal and labour care. There was significant relationship (p<0.05) between the mothers parity, education and their concerns for effectiveness of childhood immunization. There was no significant relationship (p>0.05) between the source of pregnancy and labour care and mothers concern for childhood vaccine safety. There was significant relationship (p<0.05) between the source of pregnancy and labour care and mothers concerns for childhoodmmunization effectiveness. Based on these findings, it is recommended that awareness of the value of vaccines among parents, health practitioners, community leaders, policy makers and the media to build trust in vaccine safety and effectiveness. Health practitioners should be advised on the susceptibility and severity of vaccine preventable diseases and about vaccine safety and efficacy, Researcher therefore suggest the following studies to: determine the uptake of childhood immunization among mothers of under five children. In conclusion, majority of the mothers in Awka South agreed that childhood vaccines are safe and effective despite their educational level, mothers in Awka South received antenatal and labour care in the hospitals and health centers which made them agree that childhood immunization is safe and effective.

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