Table 2.

Barriers related to childhood vaccination–Western Area Urban, Sierra Leone, 2018

Meaning unit	Category	Subthemes	Themes
Asking husband for money	Preparing for the journey and getting to the clinic	Practical constraints	Barriers related to childhood vaccination
Juggling different household duties
Competing priorities
Time taken to get to the clinic
Wasting time at the clinic	Inconveniences at the clinic
Rush to arrive first and seen first
Crowding at the clinic
Very long wait at larger health facilities
Spent a day and nothing happened
Wasting caregiver’s time
Not respecting caregivers	Feeling disrespected by health workers	Negative experiences with health workers
Shouting at caregivers
Paying for the card	Monetary expectations
Paying for free drugs
Paying for weighing
Payment as punishment
Bad care without payment
Health workers should stop demanding money
Health worker don’t appreciate less than Le 2000
Health workers withholding free drugs
Baby crying throughout the night	Vaccine side effects	Safety concerns
Baby gets ‘lazy’ for few hours
Fever in baby
Swelling at injection site
Side effects only for some vaccines
Rub onion on swollen injection site
Avoiding abnormalities from vaccine
Afraid of vaccine side effects