RESEARCH ARTICLE


Raising Awareness Among Immunization Programme Managers to the Potential Bias Resulting from the Application of Fixed Factors to Obtain Target Population Size Estimates



David W Brown1, *, Griffith Feeney2, Anthony H Burton3
1 United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, USA
2 Scarsdale Solutions, Scarsdale, New York, USA
3 World Health Or-ganization, Geneva, Switzerland


Article Metrics

CrossRef Citations:
3
Total Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 193
Abstract HTML Views: 312
PDF Downloads: 190
Total Views/Downloads: 695
Unique Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 128
Abstract HTML Views: 204
PDF Downloads: 150
Total Views/Downloads: 482



Creative Commons License
W Brown et al.; Licensee Bentham Open

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the United Nations Children's Fund, Three UN Plaza, New York, 10017; USA; Tel: +1.212.303.79.88; Fax: +1.212.735.44.20; E-mails: dbrown@unicef.org


Abstract

The challenges faced by many immunization programmes in understanding the size of the target population(s) for their work is seemingly well recognized, although not well documented. Despite the aid of adjustments for differences over time, inadequate information constitutes a major weakness of target population size estimates for many immunization programme managers. Because complete vital registration, the most reliable source for target population data, does not ex-ist in the majority of the low- and middle-income countries [1,2], immunization programmes must estimate the number of children in the target population (e.g., births, surviving infants) based on counts or estimates made by local programme staff or health workers or rely on projections from the latest census data [3].

Keywords: Population size estimates, Immunization programme.