Socioeconomic inequalities in immunization in Madagascar

What is it about?

There are many reasons for social inequalities to arise. Poorer individuals live further away from healthcare settings, or live in areas with poorer public health infrastructures, especially in rural settings. They also do not know about or cannot afford vaccines. We found that parental education and wealth influence whether children under 5 received immunizations; we also found that unvaccinated children were clustered together.

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Why is it important?

Immunizations work best to protect individuals and populations when they are consistently used and when unvaccinated children are few and far between. Clustering of unvaccinated children drastically raises the likelihood of infection and reduces the effectiveness of vaccines. This article suggests that current attempts to vaccinate children and educate parents are falling short. Efforts should be redoubled where education and immunization are limited.