Assessing the effectiveness of immunization reminder system among nursing mothers of South India

Background: Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (GIVS) 2006-2015, World Health Organization mentions death of over 2 million children of less than five years of age and approximately 1 million children suffer lifelong disability annually in India This study focuses on creating awareness about vaccine reminder system and evaluating the effectiveness of the vaccine reminder system among the nursing mothers, carried out in South Canara district of Karnataka, India. Methods: We considered nursing mothers of new-born babies aged 0-3 weeks for participation. This experimental study is conducted among 125 participants using computerized random sampling sequence. The participants were then divided into intervention and control group. The intervention group were enrolled for receiving short message service (SMS) reminders. The awareness about the ‘vaccine reminder system’ was assessed among both the groups of mothers. Results: We report that 66% of the mothers in the intervention group and 57.50 % of the mothers in the non-intervention group were unaware about the immunization reminder system before the birth of their child. After follow up with the mothers at 6^th week and 10^th week, we observed that immunization reminder system was effective to increase the vaccination coverage in the intervention group compared to the vaccination coverage in the non-intervention group. All the participants showed higher user satisfaction with almost all parents in the intervention (45%) and non-intervention (55%) willingly expressing their interest in receiving short message service reminders in the future. Conclusion: IAP-Immunize India can be a novel step to persuade all parents to vaccinate their child on time thereby reducing the India’s disturbingly high infant mortality rate.