Predictors of vaccination card retention in children 12-59 months old in Karachi, Pakistan

Objective: To determine the factors associated with retaining the vaccination card among care takers of 12-59 months old children in Karachi, Pakistan. Methods: This was an analytical cross-sectional study in Karachi. Households were randomly selected throughout a multistage cluster sampling technique. Data was collected for 504 children of 12- 59 months of age. Questionnaire was administered to caretakers to gather information regarding the children's vaccination status, sociodemographic characteristics and reviewing their vaccination cards. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS 19 using logistic regression. Results: Among 462 vaccinated children, caretakers of 33% provided vaccination cards. Odds of card retention decrease if the caretaker has a large household i.e., >5 people sharing one room (AOR 0.277, 95% CI: 0.096, 0.797) and if the child is of four to five years of age (AOR 0.544, 95% CI: 0.305, 0.970). Gender of the child, and the caretaker's education and access to electronic media were not significant predictors of vaccination card retention in our study. Conclusion: Our study showed that vaccination card retention for children 12-59 months of age was low (33%) in Karachi. There is a need to educate caretakers of young children regarding the importance of keeping vaccination card and to disseminate this information through healthcare providers. Improving vaccination card retention is one of the key measures which will help towards accurately estimating coverage and to inform health policy decisions.