Rotavirus vaccine dose-two dropout and its associated factors among children who received rotavirus vaccine dose-one in Sub-Saharan African countries: A multilevel analysis of the recent demographic and health survey

ABSTRACT

Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrhea in children worldwide. In 2016, rotavirus infection resulted in 258 173 300 episodes of diarrhea and 128 500 child deaths in the globe. The study aimed to assess the magnitude of Rotavirus vaccine dose-two dropout and associated factors among children who received rotavirus vaccine dose-one in sub-Saharan African countries. The appended and most recent demographic and health survey (DHS) dataset of 17 sub-Saharan African countries was used for data analysis. A total of 73,396 weighted samples were used. Factors associated with the outcome variable were considered significant if their p-values were ≤ .05 in the multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression model. The overall Rotavirus vaccine dose-two dropouts was 10.77% (95% CI 10.55%, 11.00%), which ranged from 2.77% in Rwanda to 37.67% in Uganda. Being younger, late birth order, having difficulty accessing health facilities, having no media exposure, having no work, having home delivery, having no antenatal follow-up, and having no postnatal checkup were factors significantly associated with the outcome variable. The overall Rotavirus vaccine dose-two dropout was higher in sub-Saharan African countries which implies that vaccine dropout is still a great issue in the region. Special attention should be given to those mothers who are young, who have no work, who give birth at home, who experienced difficulty in accessing health facilities, and late birth orders. Furthermore, targeted interventions should be considered for improving access and utilization of media, antenatal care, and postnatal care services.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• dropout
• Sub-Saharan
• vaccine
• Rotavirus
• children

Acknowledgments

The authors of the study are grateful to DHS programs for letting us to use the relevant data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author’s contribution

Belayneh Shetie Workneh: involved in designing the study, data extraction, data analysis, interpretation, report writing, and manuscript writing. Enyew Getaneh Mekonen: involved in data curation, and methodology. Alebachew Ferede Zegeye: involved in designing the study, interpretation, analysis, report, and manuscript writing. Almaz Tefera Gonete: involved in software, supervision, and data validation. Tewodros Getaneh Alemu: involved in conceptualization and validation. Tadesse Tarik Tamir: involved in review and editing, validation, and visualization. Berhan Tekeba: involved in conceptualization and methodology. Mulugeta Wassie: involved in software and validation. Alemneh Tadesse Kassie: involved in conceptualization, validation, and writing the original draft. Mohammed Seid Ali: involved in interpretation and manuscript writing.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the most recent data of the Demographic and Health Survey and it is publicly available online at (https://www.dhsprogram.com).

Ethical approval and consent to participate

This study was based on an analysis of existing survey datasets in the public domain that are freely available online with all the identifier information anonymized, no ethical approval was required.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.