Journal of Women's Health Care
Open Access

Abstract

Dropout Rate of Tetanus Toxoid Immunization and Associated Factors among Reproductive Age Group of Women in Debrebirhan Town, Amhara Region, Northern Ethiopia

Kelem Desta Belihu, Fekadu Yadassa Tesso and Tigist Demeke Woldetsadik

Background: Tetanus is a severe disease that kills one new born every eleven minutes or 134 babies each day. To prevent the infection of both mother and the newborn, tetanus toxoid immunization is given to pregnant women and women of child bearing age in Ethiopia. However, little data is available on the dropout of tetanus toxoid immunization among the reproductive age group of women in the study area.

Methods: with the objective of to assess the drop out of tetanus toxoid immunization and its associated factors among the reproductive age group of women in Debrebirhan Town, Amhara region, Ethiopia, a community based cross-sectional study was conducted from March 1 to 30, 2017 on systematically sampled 422 study subjects. The data was collected using interviewer administered pretested questionnaires and the collected data was entered into Epi-data version 3.1.5, then, exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Descriptive statistical analysis was done and frequency distributions displayed, mean and standard deviations were calculated. Then, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was done to identify the association between independent and dependent variables.

Result: The study showed that the dropout rate of tetanus toxoid was 72.3% of which tetanus toxoid vaccine 5th accounts for 29.8% of the drop out. Knowledge of the importance of TT vaccine, number of required doses for full immunization, its schedules, educational status and occupational status of the study participants were found to be significantly associated with dropout rate of TT immunization.

Conclusion: The prevalence of dropout rate of tetanus toxoid immunization was high in the study area and Knowledge of the importance of TT vaccine, number of required doses for lifelong protection and, its schedules, educational and occupational status were found to be significantly associated with TT immunization dropout rate.