INDIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ORIGINAL ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS Received: 10-02-2020 Accepted: 14-03-2020 Published: 20-03-2020 Editor: Dr. Natarajan Gajendran Citation: Masood T, Mehraj J, Guriro S, Shaikh MA (2020) Factors affecting full immunization coverage among children aged 12-23 months in urban and rural areas of Sindh. Indian Journal of Science and Technology 13(12): 1283-1292. https: //doi.org/ 10.17485/IJST/v13i12.149859 * Corresponding author. Jaishri Mehraj Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan The Task Force for Global Health, Inc. TEPHINET Program, Pakistan Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication and Immunization, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan jaishrimehraj@gmail.com Funding: None Competing Interests: None Copyright: © 2020 Masood, Mehraj, Guriro, Shaikh. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Published By Indian Society for Education and Environment (iSee) Factors affecting full immunization coverage among children aged 12-23 months in urban and rural areas of Sindh Tariq Masood 1,2 , Jaishri Mehraj 1,3,4* , Subhash Guriro 5 , Muham- mad Ali Shaikh 5 1 Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan 2 John Snow Inc. (JSI) Research and Training Inc 3 The Task Force for Global Health, Inc. TEPHINET Program, Pakistan 4 Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication and Immunization, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan 5 Sindh Madressatul Islam (SMI) University, Sindh, Karachi, Pakistan Abstract Objectives: Child mortality is still high in developing countries due to low vacci- nation coverage and outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases. Therefore, this study is conducted to determine the status of vaccination coverage and asso- ciated factors among children aged 12-23 months in urban and rural parts of Sindh, Pakistan. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the rural and urban settings of Sindh, Pakistan. Following the WHO guidelines, a 30 clus- ter household survey was conducted and 300 children were recruited for each study setting from Lyari, Karachi and Umerkot areas of Sindh province from Feb – Mar 2017. Information was obtained from consenting parents by trained interviewers through a pre-tested questionnaire. Multivariable logistic regres- sion model was used to identify the factors associated with the vaccination. Findings: Overall 600 children from both settings were included in the analy- sis. A total of 62.8% children were vaccinated. About 80.3% children were fully vaccinated in Lyari in comparison to 45.3% in Umerkot. The logistic regression analysis factors associated with vaccination were: parent`s awareness of vac- cination (AOR: 9.77; 95%CI: 1.76 – 54.28), knowledge about vaccination place (AOR: 2.51; 95% CI: 1.19 – 5.26) and mother's tetanus vaccination status (one dose AOR: 4.27; 95% CI: 1.84 – 9.93 and two doses AOR: 12.43; 95% CI: 7.71 – 20.04). Conclusion: In the urban setting, vaccination coverage was better than compared to rural settings. Parent's knowledge about vaccination and vacci- nation centers were identified as the statistically significant determinants of vaccination among children aged 12-23 months. Keywords: Children; Vaccination Coverage; Urban; Rural; Pakistan https://www.indjst.org/ 1283