Beyond coverage: Timeliness of routine childhood vaccination and its determinants in rural northern Ghana.
Vaccination card possession strongly predicted timely childhood vaccination in rural Ghana
Beyond coverage: Timeliness of routine childhood vaccination and its determinants in rural northern Ghana.
Achieving the goals of Immunisation Agenda 2030 (IA2030) requires a clear understanding of vaccination timeliness and its determinants.
We conducted a community-based analytical cross-sectional study among 3371 caregivers of children aged 0-59 months in Gushegu (n = 1361) and Nanumba South (n = 2010) Districts, Northern Ghana, from 24 April to 4 May 2025.
Children whose caregivers had a vaccination card had far higher hazard of on-time vaccination.
Bacille Calmette-Guérin had the highest age-appropriate coverage (64.2% in Gushegu and 52.6% in Nanumba South), whereas timeliness decreased across multi-dose vaccine series.
Age-appropriate coverage for pneumococcal conjugate vaccine declined from 60.9% to 20.5% in Gushegu and from 51.1% to 21.5% in Nanumba South between the first and third doses.
Similarly, timely Pentavalent vaccination declined from 59.6% to 19.8% and from 52.1% to 23.0%, respectively.
Rotavirus vaccine age-appropriate coverage dropped to 8.6% in Gushegu and 9.4% in Nanumba South for the third dose.
Timely vaccination remains suboptimal in both districts, with marked declines across the immunisation schedule.
Strategies to improve vaccination card retention, caregiver education, access to vaccination services, and facility-based deliveries may enhance vaccination timeliness.