The Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) method has been growingly used in evaluating public health interventions in decentralized settings. We assessed the validity of LQAS method against results of data generated from highly monitored house-to-house polio vaccination of supplemental immunization activities; and that of data generated from routine immunization and supplementation. This study was conducted in Butaleja district, Uganda. It was a descriptive cross-sectional study that was executed in 2011. We collected community-based data by interviewing 228 mothers of children of various age categories each to assess for coverage of oral polio vaccine, routine vaccination and supplementation using the LQAS method. We also reviewed records of vaccination with oral polio vaccine during the supplemental immunization activities of 2010 and 2011 and collected data on routine immunization and supplementation from the child registers and tally sheets from health facilities. We compared the point estimates for the latter two against 95% CIs for the weighted coverage of the same antigens and supplements for LQAS survey. We found out that point estimates for house-to-house polio vaccination were within the 95% CI for weighted coverage of LQAS survey indicators for all the four rounds. Coverage for 7 of the 9 indicators of routine immunization lay within the 95% CI of weighted coverage of the same indicators generated from LQAS survey. We computed non-adjusted and wide-CI-adjusted global accuracy-levels of 84.6% and 81.8% respectively for LQAS. We concluded that LQAS method can generate accurate information for decision making at districts when all quality standards are adhered to. Managers of health services can reliably adopt this sampling method to assess district performance; and compare differential performance across service indicators and supervision areas in order to enhance evidence-based prioritization and resource allocation in decentralized settings.

LQAS, Accuracy, House-to-House Polio Data, Routine HMIS