Vol.5, No.5, 892-897 (2013) Health doi:10.4236/health.2013.55117 Copyright © 2013 SciRes. Openly accessible at http://www.scirp.org/journal/health/ Socioeconomic factors effecting polio vaccination in Pakistan Sheeba Arooj 1* , Sitwat Ali 1 , Nimra Baber 1 , Atif Abbasi 2 , Midhat Ali 3 1 Institute of Social & Cultural Studies, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan; * Corresponding Author: sarooj45@yahoo.com 2 Dapartment of Statistics, University of Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, Pakistan 3 Department of Sociology, Bahauddin Zakria University, Multan, Pakistan Received 29 March 2013; revised 30 April 2013; accepted 15 May 2013 Copyright © 2013 Sheeba Arooj et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Child vaccinations are one of most cost effective health programs that have weak- ened a number of child morbidity and mortality rate all over the world. Pakistan is considered one of the major country of the world, where people especially children are bounded by many harmful infectious diseases like polio, hepatitis, viral infections etc. The effectiveness of routine childhood immunization programs relies on mul- tiple factors. Socio-economic determinants have the potential to affect immunization programs. The purpose of the present study was to deter- mine the association between socio-economic factors and polio vaccination coverage among children in Pakistan. Methods: The study used data of Pakistan demographic health survey (PDHS 2006-07 N 10023). The study focused on respondents who had births in last five years. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to determine the association between variables. Spss version 20 was used for data analysis. A number of socioeconomic variables were used in chi square & binary logistic regression model to check out their association with polio vacci- nation coverage. Results: Study shows that most dominant factors associated with polio vaccina- tion coverage were region that is NWFP OR 3.48 (odd ratio) with 95% confidence interval (C-I 2.06 & 3.13) & Punjab OR 2.54 (C-I 2.062 & 3.131), residence urban OR 1.626 (C-I 1.451 & 1.822), sex of child male OR 1.125 (C-I 1.008 & 1.256), age of mother 25 - 34 years OR 1.11 (C-I 0.978 & 1.276), wealth index rich OR 2.98 (C-I 2.55 & 3.48), age of child 4 - 5 years OR 1.17 (C-I 0.899 & 1.538), mo- ther’s education higher OR 2.06 (C-I 1.776 & 2.411), father’s education higher OR 1.399 (C-I 1.221 & 1.203) ,father’s occupation professional OR 1.27 (C-I 0.929 & 1.737). Conclusion: In devel- oping countries like Pakistan most of children remain unvaccinated because of many socio- economic constraints. Poor marginalized people have low awareness regarding importance of po- lio vaccine. Along with social hierarchies, edu- cational attainment of parents is strong indi- cator of defining awareness level regarding vac- cination. Keywords: Pakistan Demographic Health Survey; Polio Vaccination; Socioeconomic Factors; Children Less than 5 Years; Odd Ratio 1. INTRODUCTION Poliomyelitis which is also called polio or infantile paralysis, is a highly infectious viral disease that can attack the central nervous system and it is characterized by symptoms that range from a mild non paralytic infec- tion to total paralysis in just a few hours (Medical dic- tionary). There is no cure for polio once a person becomes infected. The treatment is usually focused on providing comfort, managing symptoms and avoiding complications [1]. Mass immunization campaigns are launched as a strategy to eradicate polio and usually these campaigns achieve high levels of vaccination coverage but achieving a high level of coverage is not enough because there are a lot of examples in the literature that the outbreaks of the polio have occurred in under vaccinated populations that were living within otherwise highly vaccinated population [2]. The factors which have a statistically significant as- sociation with vaccination coverage include level of