Routine childhood immunization service readiness and uptake in the selected border District councils of Tanzania: A cross-sectional study

Background: Globally and in Tanzania, vaccine-preventable diseases are emerging and resurging for different reasons. This trend necessitated an assessment to find out the facility’s readiness to provide routine childhood immunization services among primary healthcare facilities and its uptake in district councils of Tanzania. Methods: : A cross-sectional study was conducted between 9 and 21 May 2022, to assess readiness, observation checklist was used to collect information from a sample of 32 health facilities which was randomly selected. A questionnaire was used to collect information from a sample of 250 caregivers to assess the level of uptake and factors related to childhood vaccination. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the collected data. Where chi-square and logistic regression models were used for categorical data and for controlling the confounders respectively. P-values of less than 0.05 at 95% CI were considered statistically significant. Data entry and analysis were conducted using SPSS version 26. Findings: Of the 32 health facilities that were recruited in this study, the majority (81.3%) were owned by the government, of which 27 were Dispensaries and 5 were Health centres. All the healthcare facilities visited had functional refrigerators for storing vaccines and maintaining the cold chain. On average, the availability of basic childhood vaccines was 96%. More than half (78.1%) of health facilities suffered from a shortage of staff and 81.3% had no reliable transport for providing immunization services. Regarding the uptake of childhood vaccines, of 250 children studied, 56% were males, 82.8% were born at healthcare facilities, and only 73.2% of the children were fully immunized. The facility's readiness to provide immunization services and place of delivery were the main factors for the uptake of childhood vaccines (p<0.05). The odds of children being fully immunized were 0.37 less likely when delivered at home and 0.157 less likely when receiving services from those facilities which were not ready to provide childhood vaccines (AOR = 0.37, [0.136-1.1008] and (AOR = 0.157, [0.021-1.231]) respectively. Conclusion: Primary healthcare facilities must always be ready to provide childhood immunization services to reverse the local and global trend of vaccine-preventable disease resurgence, especially in border district councils where disease importation is a possibility.