Assessing Community Members’ Knowledge about AEFI, Awareness about AEFI Reporting and Their Vaccine Safety Perception in Oyo State Nigeria

Immunization as a cost-efficient has proven to be a successful public health initiatives, as it prevents more than 2.5 million child fatalities yearly.Worry about the possibility of adverse events after vaccination (AEFI) may lead to low vaccination rates, a reduction in vaccine confidence, or return of vaccine preventable diseases.This study aim to understand the community level knowledge about AEFI, their awareness about AEFI reporting and perception about vaccine safety.This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study that was carried out among 422 vaccine recipients in Oyo State that have at least received a dose of vaccine in the last 10 years.Semi-structured questionnare was used for data collection.The data was analyzed using SPSS24 and the descriptive statistical tools used are frequency, mean and standard deviation.The mean knowledge score out of 10 was 6.61± 2.34 and more than half (56.2%) of the respondents have good knowledge about the concept of AEFI.The mean awareness scores out of 10 was 4.75±1.48and only few (3.3%) of respondents have good awareness about AEFI reporting.The majority (95.7%) of study respondents perceived vaccines as safe and effective against vaccine preventable diseases, however more than half (52.9%) of the respondents perceived that many HWs administer vaccines in a harmful manner.This study demonstrated community members' suboptimal awareness about reporting system for AEFI, as well as having perception that vaccines though safe and effective, their administration were in a harmful manner.