Trends in adverse events following immunization reported in Puttalam and competency public health midwives in identifying and preventing those events.

Abstract

A descriptive cross sectional study with three components was carried out. The first component describes the trends in the adverse events fol1owing immunization which .are reported to the epidemiology unit by the government health institutions in the .district of Puttalam during the period of 2002-2004. Reporting of AEFI is increasing over the time. The commonest vaccine that leads to adverse events was DPT. The second component aimed at describing the level of knowledge on identifying and preventing those adverse events, among the PHMM attached to MOH offices the majority of the PHMM of this study sample are having better knowledge as 48 was having "moderate level of knowledge" and 50 was having "good knowledge" . The third component assessed the skills of the sub sample of 30 PHMM on identifying and preventing those AEFI. 76.7 of PHMM had moderate level of skill and 10.0 had good skills. Majority of PHMM were following correct site and route and proper technique during immunization. Although 96 of them need at least once a year in- service programme on immunization, Neither supervision nor in-service training programmes had been able to improve knowledge or skills in this particular group of PHMM, therefore quality of supervision and in-service programmes need attention There is a statistically significant correlation between the knowledge and skills on AEFI among the 30 midwives in the sub sample