Knowledge, Perception and Factors Influencing the Attitude of Mothers Towards Immunizaton of Children Ni Ujoelen Community, Ekpoma, Edo State.

This study was carried out to determine knowledge, perception and factors influencing the attitude of mothers towards immunization of children in Ujeolen Community. Ekpoma, Edo State. A descriptive research design was used while a simple random probability sampling technique was used to distribute the questionnaires to two hundred and seventy respondents. From the result on the knowledge. 17.4% have not heard o f immunization before while 14.8% have not immunized their children before while 20% does not know of the six childhood disease. Also. 42.2% said there are other traditional ways to immunize children. The study further showed that the perception of the respondents on childhood immunization was poor as 28.1% of the mothers said Immunizing children can make them fall sick and another 9.6%said Immunizing children is not important while said 61.8% said immunization process i s tiring while 55.5% said there is no traditional ways of immunization. The results on the factors influencing the attitude of mothers towards immunization showed thatmothers are influenced by cultural barriers which have limited their participations, low personnel at the clinic, no vaceines at the local health center. Among other factors affecting mother's attitude also includes lack of spousal support, funds to procure vaccines and distance from the clinics. It was concluded that within the limits of this study it can be said that though there seems to be a high level o f knowledge among mothers i n Ujoelen community Ekpoma, generally, this knowledge is not reflected in their practices as there are still other factors outside knowledge influencing their compliance to immunization programmes. There is a need to properly counsel them on discase prevention and health protection. Some women were observed t o still have negative attitudes towards immunization which calls for periodic health promotion and education.