Epidemiology of the Unimmunized Child: Findings from the Grey Literature

At the request of the World Health Organization (WHO), IMMUNIZATIONbasics (IMMbasics), the global USAID-funded project that supports routine immunization, undertook a review of the “grey literature” on “the epidemiology of the unimmunized child.”IMMbasics established the following broad selection criteria for documents that would be included in this review. Each document (study, review, or report) had to: Address routine immunization services; Describe activities carried out since 1980; Report on systematically-collected information about unvaccinated children. The IMMbasics team reviewed approximately 160 documents from the grey literature. Of these, 126 contained relevant information on the two basic questions this review sought to answer: what groups of children are unimmunized (have no vaccinations or are dropouts/behind schedule) and what are the most common factors or determinants of children being unimmunized? Of the 126 documents, 47 were from the current decade, with the other 79 produced between 1980 and 1999. Sixty-two (53.9%) of the 115 country or regional documents concerned Africa, 38 (33.0%) Asia, 9 (7.8%) Latin America, four (3.5%) the Middle East, and two (1.7%) Europe. India was addressed in 18 documents, Kenya in 11, and Bangladesh in 10. The searches yielded no documents on China and only three on two studies in the Caribbean. http://www.immunizationbasics.jsi.com/Index.html]