Effect of Short Message Service On Prevention of Missed Childhood Immunization Among Mothers Attending Immunization Clinics in Selected Hospitals in Lagos State, Nigeria

Immunization against childhood diseases remain a significant public health needs in Nigeria. It is one of the major interventions recommended to reduce infants’ morbidity and mortality. Hence, the research assessed the effect of SMS reminder on prevention of missed childhood immunization among mothers attending infant welfare clinics in selected hospitals in Lagos state. A quasi-experimental design was used. The purposive sampling technique was utilized to collect data from 268 mothers of infants less than 12 months who attended the selected hospitals during the study. Self- structured questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. Data was analysed using SPSS version 22 software. T-test statistics test of difference was used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. This study concluded that SMS reminder has a tremendous positive effect in The findings of the study showed that there was no significant difference  [t(135) = 1.00, P = .319] between the mean score [(M = 0.99, SD = 0.121]  of missed vaccinations in the control group and the mean score [(M = 0.97, SD = 0.170] of missed vaccinations in the intervention group in the pre-intervention stage (PENTA 1). Also, findings of the study revealed that there was a significant difference between the mean of the number of missed vaccination in the control group and the mean of the number of missed vaccination in the intervention group in the first and second intervention (PENTA 2 and PENTA 3). The study recommended among others that there should be a full-scale implementation of the SMS reminder system in hospitals, because SMS reminders have shown to have a tremendous effect in increasing the number of vaccination and rate of completion.

Keywords: Short Message Service, Missed immunization, infants, Pentavalent Vaccine,