By Ikpa, Ebere Gabriella
The need to improve uptake of routine immunizations by mothers using reminder and recall strategies so as to prevent childhood vaccine-preventable diseases is a global public health concern. Globally, about 1.5 million children still die yearly from vaccine-preventable diseases. In Nigeria, 62.8% children are not immunized while 36.4% of children were partially immunized due to poor uptake. The Taraba State W.H.O. reports for 2011-2014 showed hat uptake of routine immunization was less then 50% in 14 out of the 16 L.G.As as about 87.5% of mothers missed their routine immunization appointments. Previous empirical studies have found that reminding and recalling mothers for their immunization appointments improve their rate of immunization uptake but no such studies have been done in Taraba State. The study was designed to find the efficacy of telephone call reminders and recalls in improving uptake of routine immunization services in Taraba State. Five objectives were formulated, five corresponding research questions posed and five hypotheses postulated for verification. A quasi-experimental research design was used for the study. The instruments for data collection were two pre and post-intervention immunization checklists. Reliability test yielded a co-efficient index of 0.72. The population was 1000 while the sample size was 100 mothers of 0-1 year olds coming for routine immunization at the time of the study. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, the McNemar’s test and ANCOVA. The major results of the study were that: the total mean rate of uptake for the scheduled visits for the three antigens by the experimental groups pre-intervention was 1.50+0.71 and 2.74+0.44 post-intervention and for the control groups pre-intervention, it was 1.74+0.53 and 1.98+0.62 post intervention; there was a significant difference between the pre and post-intervention uptake of the experimental groups; there was no statistically significant difference between the rate of uptake of majority of the antigens by the control groups in the pre- and post-invention periods; there was a significant difference in the rates of uptake between the experimental and control groups; there was no significant difference between the uptake of the experimental groups in the rural and urban locations; there were no significant difference between the rate of uptake of the experimental and control groups in the rural and urban locations. Recommendations were that effective current communication strategies like telephone calls used to remind and recall mothers to ensure improvement in uptake of routine immunization services in both rural and urban locations.