Awareness, Acceptability and Factors Influencing Malaria Vaccine Uptake Among Caregivers of Children Under 5 in South-Western Nigeria.

Background: Malaria remains a major cause of preventable deaths among children worldwide, despite the availability of several interventions for controlling and eliminating the disease. The WHO recommended the first malaria vaccine, RTS, S/AS01 in October 2021 to immunize children in sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we set out to evaluate the knowledge, awareness and acceptability of the malaria vaccine among mothers of under 5 in south-west Nigeria before the vaccine's rollout in Nigeria.

Methods: We employed a hospital-based cross-sectional study for this study. A pretested semistructured, interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to elicit information from the study participants. Data obtained were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20.0).

Results: A total of 797 respondents participated in the study. Only 26.0% of the respondents were aware of the new vaccine. However, the majority (90.0%) were willing to accept the malaria vaccination and to pay for it (82.1%). The crude odds ratio reveals that the odds of awareness of the malaria vaccine were more than 5 times higher among those who have tertiary education (OR = 5.470, CI = 1.224-24.444) compared with those with primary education.

Conclusion: The level of awareness of the malarial vaccine is low among the caregivers of under 5 children living in south-western Nigeria. However, the willingness to accept the vaccine is high. Recruiting, training and retraining of healthcare providers and other stakeholders with the designated role of providing health education on malaria prevention and vaccines are key in ensuring the success of malaria vaccination.