Rural Households' Perception of the Expanded Programme on Children Immunization (Epi) in the Southwest of Nigeria.
The study was carried out in the South West of Nigeria. Three states out of six were selected namely; Ekiti, Ondo and Osun States. Three Local Government Areas (LGAs) were randomly selected from each State while two communities were sampled from each LGA. In all, 18 communities were used for the study. From each community, ten households were randomly interviewed giving a total of 180 households. Data collected were analyzed using frequency tables and percentages and also Chi-square analysis. The study found that only 18 percent of the respondents did not participate in Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) while 56 percent had high participation. Further finding showed that the respondents had favorable attitude towards EPI, and as well, perceived it as important. Furthermore, it was found that age, marital status, household size and religion had significant relationship with the respondents’ perception towards EPI. It was recommended that the zero payment status for the programme should be continued and the services of town criers in the communities should be encouraged as rural people placed much premium on information disseminated from town criers as a form of reminder.