Development of a Low-Cost Mobile Phone-Based Intervention to Support Infants’ Vaccination among Nursing Mothers

Abstract

In Nigeria, nursing mothers in rural communities lack public amenities such as safe water, adequate primary health care, good electricity supply, GSM network coverage and good road network. These often predispose them to be noncompliant to infants’ immunization uptakes and have high rates of morbidity in Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPD) among infants. Mobile phones can be leveraged upon to provide a viable medium to support immunization uptakes and adherence using few mobile phone-based interventions which are available for low-income nursing mothers. Hence the study assessed development of a low cost mobile phone-based intervention to support infants’ vaccination among nursing mothers

The study developed a low cost mobile phone-based intervention to support infants’ vaccination among nursing mothers in an effort to alleviate the challenges of infant’s vaccination among nursing mothers, a low cost mobile phone-based application was designed and tested among nursing mothers. In the development of the app, incremental software development was adhered to using Java programming language in an Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The software was pretested using pre and post experimental data collection.

The app is a reminder system, preloaded with immunization awareness messages. It is simple to install and use and does not cost nursing mothers airtime or data. It only requires scheduling at-birth immunization’s date. The app can schedule and display all other immunization dates automatically; relate specific health benefits of each vaccine as a reminder messages both in English and Yoruba languages automatically as scheduled. The experiences of the nursing mothers with this software were gathered for six months through pre-test and post-test pre-experimental design.

The app was found effective in reminding the nursing mothers about immunizations appointments, enlightening them about the immunization health benefits to their infants. The intervention has possibility of improving immunization compliances and attendants at clinic appointments. Since it is low cost software, it is therefore recommended for the nursing mothers.