Prevalence of missed opportunities for vaccination (MOV) indicators among children aged 12-23 months in sub-Saharan African countries: An individual-level meta-analysis of DHS and MICS national household data surveys

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the greatest proportion of under-vaccinated children. The aim of this study was to plot missed opportunities for vaccination (MOV) indicators in SSA, including crude prevalence, all corrected, uncorrected, and some corrected MOVs in children aged 12-23 months. This is an individual-level meta-analysis of MOV indicators of routine immunization in children aged 12-23 months in SSA, using national household data from the DHS and MICS. The meta-analysis included 23,557 out of 39,465 children aged 12-23 months. We estimated a pooled crude MOV prevalence of 34% [24%-43%]. We also estimated the plotted prevalences of all corrected, uncorrected, and some corrected MOVs to be 14% [11%-18%], 15% [6%-24%], and 5% [3%-7%], respectively. Child- and visit-based MOVs by type of vaccine varied consistently across the SSA. Our results also revealed that suppressing MOVs will enable the SSA to achieve vaccination coverage levels exceeding 90%.