The timeliness of the few children who had immunisation indicated as received but not dated in the health card, could be different from the many where it was dated. However, these children had similar baseline characteristics (data not shown), and we therefore believe that this has not biased the estimates markedly. Contraindications for vaccination were
not assessed [27], but this is applicable only for a few children. In some cases, it may be justified to postpone vaccination temporarily when children are moderately or severely ill [27]. Vaccination is then recommended to be given soon after recovery. Some children may have been HIV-positive with severe immune Cilengitide nmr suppression. Assessment of whether and when measles vaccination selleck chemicals llc for these children should be given is more complicated [27]. Among those few who had tested their children, none reported that their children were HIV-positive (data not shown). This study shows that high immunisation coverage rates do not necessarily imply age-appropriate vaccination status. Many children were unprotected by vaccination for several months despite being vaccinated at the end of follow-up. For the future, immunisation monitoring should focus not only on whether children get immunised, but also when they do. Continued efforts are needed to improve vaccination
timeliness. We thank the data collectors, all the families who contributed to this study, and Lumbwe Chola for critical reading of the paper. Contributors: LTF: design, analysis and writing. VN, IMSE: design, implementation, analysis and co-writing. HS, TT, JKT: design, analysis and co-writing. Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests. Funding: The study was part of the European Union-funded project PROMISE-EBF (contract no. INCO-CT 2004-003660, http://www.promiseresearch.org). It was also financially supported through the project ‘Essential nutrition and child health in Uganda’ funded by NUFU (Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education). LTF, IMSE, HS and TT were employed and funded
by the University of Bergen. VN and JKT was employed and Sitaxentan funded by Makerere University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. “
“The Publisher would like to apologise for the incorrect numbering of Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 in the original article above. The affected Figures are reproduced here in their correct numbered sequence. “
“The author would like to apologise for an omission from the Acknowledgements section in the above published article, detailing funding support from the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre programme. The Acknowledgements section should read as follows: We are grateful to all volunteers for their altruism and willingness to participate in this study.