Immunization, urbanization and slums
Citation: Crocker-Buque T, Mindra G, Duncan R, et al. Immunization, urbanization and slums – a systematic review of factors and interventions. BMC Public Health. 2017;17:556.
Language: English.
Free to view: Yes.
What is this? More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. This is expected to increase with people migrating from rural areas, and with increasing numbers of people living in urban poor communities and slums. However, lower immunization coverage is found in poorer urban dwellers in many contexts and evidence on factors associated with immunization coverage and interventions that might improve coverage could help policy makers trying to manage infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.
The authors of this review searched for observational or interventional studies related to factors affecting the low immunization rate in poor urban areas. They restricted their searches to articles published since 1 January 2000 and did the search in July 2016. They included 63 studies.
What was found: There was high diversity in socio-economic and behavioral factors linked with immunization status in poor urban communities and slums.
There have been relatively few studies of interventions to improve immunization in slum populations.
Implications: The authors of this review concluded that intervention programs should be designed with the aid of the local communities and that immunization interventions are needed that target migrants from rural areas.
This summary was prepared by Joly Ghanawi, edited by Sydney Johnson and finalized by Mike Clarke.