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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health

Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1591325

This article is part of the Research TopicEradicating Polio in Pakistan and Other Countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: Epidemiology, Surveillance, and ImmunizationView all 8 articles

Estimating Proportions of Missed Children and Reasons for Non-Vaccination Following Implementation of "Reaching the Unreached" Multiantigen Immunization Campaign -South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, July-August 2023

Provisionally accepted
Amen  Ben HamidaAmen Ben Hamida1*Fawad  AlamFawad Alam2Brock  StewartBrock Stewart1Shahid  AhmadShahid Ahmad2,3Eid  NawazEid Nawaz3Hafizullah  KhanHafizullah Khan3Akerele  AdekunleAkerele Adekunle1Abdinoor  MohamedAbdinoor Mohamed1Chukwuma  MbaeyiChukwuma Mbaeyi1Richard  FrankaRichard Franka1Abdul  BasitAbdul Basit3Rana  SafdarRana Safdar2
  • 1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Georgia), Atlanta, Georgia
  • 2Integral Global Health, Islamabad, Pakistan
  • 3Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Polio Emergency Operations Centre, Peshawar, Pakistan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

21 Wild Polio Virus 1 (WPV1) cases, all of which occurred within districts in the south Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. In May 2023, a special immunization campaign was conducted to reach all children under 5 years of age within 69 high-risk union councils (UCs) in six districts of south KP.The campaign comprised of three rounds, each lasting 8 days, that provided bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine (bOPV) as well as other vaccines using a site-to-site delivery strategy. Rounds 1, 2, and 3 were conducted in July 2023, August 2023, and April 2024, respectively. We conducted a post-campaign evaluation (PCE) survey following the first two rounds, to assess OPV receipt, using a multistage sampling design. We analyzed PCE data for the two first rounds to provide UC-level estimates of the proportions of children who did not receive bOPV and assessed reasons for non-vaccination.The PCE survey included 8,125 children from 67 UCs during round 1 and 7,726 children from 47 UCs during round 2. The median number of villages by UC was 8 for both rounds. The median number of children by village was 16 for round 1 and 19 for round 2. Overall, 16% of children missed bOPV (95% CI = 14-18%) for round 1 (estimated total of 39,983 children [95% CI = 34,808]); and 15% (95% CI = 13%-17%) for round 2 (estimated total of 24,257 children [95% CI = 21,474]). Percentages and numbers of missed children varied widely among UCs during both rounds. Six UCs in the first round and four UCs in the second had >40% missed children. Reasons for non-vaccination were similar for each round, with operational reasons leading by >60%, followed by refusals (≥ 20%), and child not available (~10%).We found a high proportion of missed children during this special immunization intervention and identified the UCs with the greatest challenges. In these UCs, there is a need to design and implement comprehensive, tailored, and effective interventions for each reason why children missed vaccination.

Keywords: polio, Polio Campaign Monitoring, missed children, Pakistan, Supplementary immunisation activities

Received: 11 Mar 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Ben Hamida, Alam, Stewart, Ahmad, Nawaz, Khan, Adekunle, Mohamed, Mbaeyi, Franka, Basit and Safdar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Amen Ben Hamida, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Georgia), Atlanta, Georgia

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