Researchers from the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have published a study in Vaccine: X examining equity in vaccination coverage in Nigeria. Joshua Mak and colleagues applied the Vaccine Economics Research for Sustainability and Equity (VERSE) tool to Nigeria’s 2018 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to cross-sectionally evaluate equity in vaccination status for national immunization program vaccines over factors such as sex of child, maternal education level, socioeconomic status, and state of residence. This tool produces a composite equity metric, which accounts for multiple factors influencing inequity in vaccination coverage.
The findings showed that while socioeconomic status contributes substantially to variations in vaccination coverage, measures based on this alone are inefficient for equity assessments, and maternal education level was found to be the greatest contributor towards a child’s immunization status among model variables. States with similar levels of coverage may experience different levels of equity. Applying the VERSE tool to future Nigeria DHS surveys can allow decisionmakers to track changes in vaccination coverage equity, in a standardized manner, over time.
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