Impact of Health Education on Parents’ Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding Vaccination at Mouanko, Edea Health District, Cameroon

Background: Vaccination is known to prevent 2.5 million deaths per year worldwide. However, vaccination coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa including Cameroon is still low due to poor knowledge on vaccination.

Objective: We aimed at investigating the impact of health education on parents’ knowledge and attitudes regarding vaccination.

Methods: This was a cross sectional interventional study which investigated the impact of health education on parents’ knowledge and attitudes regarding vaccination in the Mouanko Health Area. Participants were selected using the cluster sampling technique and were randomly assigned either to an intervention or a control group. The intervention was health education on vaccination that was administered only to the intervention group after administering a pretest. Data on knowledge and attitudes was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. Each correct response to questions on the questionnaire was given a point. The knowledge section was scored on 13 and parents who scored seven points and above were termed knowledgeable while participants who scored four points and above on seven were said to have positive attitudes. Data was collected from May 13 to June 15, 2019 and analysed using SPSS version 25.0.

Results: Out of the 270 parents who participated in the study females were the most represented (88.9%). Their mean age was 25.4 (SD = 3.9) years and ranged from <21 years (22.2%) to >40 years (11.1%). More than half (53.7%) of the participants’ children were in the aged range 0 – 6 months. Most of the participants (66.7 %) were married, 74.0% had first school and 72.2% had an average monthly income of less than 37, 000frs CFA. More than half (61.1%) of the participants lived about 5km and more from the vaccination centre. Up to 70.0% of the participants had heard about vaccination, but only 25.0% knew its benefits. Less than half (40.7%) had positive feelings about vaccination.

After the intervention, there was a significant increase in the proportion of participants who had knowledge on vaccination from 35.0% to 57.6% and from 31.0% to 41.9% for positive attitudes. The p-values were at 0.001 and 0.012 for knowledge and attitudes respectively (CI = 95%).

Conclusion: The positive change in the intervention group after the intervention indicated the cost-effectiveness of the health education.