Implementing WHO guidance on conducting and analysing vaccination coverage cluster surveys: Two examples from Nigeria.
John Ndegwa Wagai, Dale Rhoda, Mary Prier, Mary Kay Trimmer, Caitlin B Clary, Joseph Oteri, Bassey Okposen, Adeyemi Adeniran, Carolina Danovaro-Holliday, Felicity Cutts
Author Information
John Ndegwa Wagai: Independent Consultant, Nairobi, Kenya. ORCID
Dale Rhoda: Biostat Global Consulting, Worthington, OH, United States of America. ORCID
Mary Prier: Biostat Global Consulting, Worthington, OH, United States of America.
Mary Kay Trimmer: Biostat Global Consulting, Worthington, OH, United States of America.
Caitlin B Clary: Biostat Global Consulting, Worthington, OH, United States of America. ORCID
Joseph Oteri: National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria.
Bassey Okposen: National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria.
Adeyemi Adeniran: National Bureau of Statistics, Abuja, Nigeria.
Carolina Danovaro-Holliday: World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Felicity Cutts: Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
In 2015, the World Health Organization substantially revised its guidance for vaccination coverage cluster surveys (revisions were finalized in 2018) and has since developed a set of accompanying resources, including definitions for standardized coverage indicators and software (named the Vaccination Coverage Quality Indicators-VCQI) to calculate them.-The current WHO vaccination coverage survey manual was used to design and conduct two nationally representative vaccination coverage surveys in Nigeria-one to assess routine immunization and one to measure post-measles campaign coverage. The primary analysis for both surveys was conducted using VCQI. In this paper, we describe those surveys and highlight some of the analyses that are facilitated by the new resources. In addition to calculating coverage of each vaccine-dose by age group, VCQI analyses provide insight into several indicators of program quality such as crude coverage versus valid doses, vaccination timeliness, missed opportunities for simultaneous vaccination, and, where relevant, vaccination campaign coverage stratified by several parameters, including the number of previous doses received. The VCQI software furnishes several helpful ways to visualize survey results. We show that routine coverage of all vaccines is far below targets in Nigeria and especially low in northeast and northwest zones, which also have highest rates of dropout and missed opportunities for vaccination. Coverage in the 2017 measles campaign was higher and showed less geospatial variation than routine coverage. Nonetheless, substantial improvement in both routine program performance and campaign implementation will be needed to achieve disease control goals.
References
Bull World Health Organ. 1982;60(2):253-60
[PMID: 6980735]
