Evaluating the vaccination coverage and timeliness of childhood vaccination among Indigenous children in Peninsular Malaysia: Findings from the 2022 Orang Asli Health Survey

Abstract

Objective: To assess the complete vaccination coverage and timeliness of childhood vaccinations among Indigenous children in Peninsular Malaysia.

Methods: The study utilized data from the 2022 Orang Asli Health Survey, a cross-sectional survey conducted among a representative sample of Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia. A total of 68 villages were randomly selected from a pool of 853 villages, encompassing diverse geographic and sociodemographic contexts with a total of 15 950 respondents Orang Asli successfully interviewed. However, this study only utilized data from surveyed children aged 12 to 59 months with a total of 1551 children included. Validated structured questionnaires were used to collect sociodemographic data and health status, with nurses verifying vaccination records. Children who received all nine primary vaccinations were defined as having complete vaccination while those who received vaccine within the recommended time were defined as having timely vaccination. Data analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS version 25.0, focusing on descriptive analyses of children’s vaccination status.

Results: The prevalence of overall complete vaccination among Indigenous children was 87.7%, while timely vaccination was only 40.3%. The prevalence of complete vaccination for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the first dose of hepatitis B, three doses of DTaP-IPV-Hib, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) was above 95.0%, except for the second and third doses of hepatitis B. The prevalence of timely vaccination ranged from above 95.0% for vaccines given at birth, gradually decreasing with increasing age to 57.5% for the first dose of MMR. Moreover, the completion rates for three doses of DtaP-IPV-Hib and the initial dose of MMR surpassed 90% among Indigenous children aged 12-23 months, yet the timeliness remained at a moderate level.

Conclusions: While the overall complete vaccination coverage among Indigenous children in Malaysia is relatively high, there are concerning disparities in the timeliness of vaccination, particularly as children age.

Keywords

Childhood vaccination coverage / Orang Asli / Indigenous / Timeliness / Age-appropriate vaccinations / Peninsular Malaysia

Conflict of interest statement

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the dedicated data collectors and research team members of the Orang Asli Health Survey 2022. Besides that, the authors would like to thank the Director General of the Ministry of Health Malaysia for approving the article's publication.

Funding

The authors received no extramural funding for the study.

Availability of data and materials

The dataset for this study is available upon request to the corresponding author. The principal author kept the dataset according to the National Institutes of Health Malaysia research data repository guidelines.

Authors’ contributions

SMA: Conceptualization, writing the original draft, review and editing; methodology, and formal analysis. NAW: Conceptualization, project administration, data collection supervision, writing the original draft, review and editing, methodology, formal analysis. NS: project administration, data collection supervision, writing the original draft, review and editing. MAAA: Conceptualization, project administration, data collection supervision, review and editing. NHR: Conceptualization, project administration, data collection supervision, review and editing. NA: Conceptualization, project administration, data collection supervision, review and editing, resources. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript for publication.

Publisher’s note

The Publisher of the Journal remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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