Change of parents' willingness to vaccinate children after Shangdong vaccine event — take Yangpu District of Shanghai as example

ObjectiveTo investigate parental attitudes towards vaccination following the Shandong Illegal Vaccine Selling Event and to provide evidence for improving strategies of vaccination and communication.

MethodsParents of children aged 0-3 years who have not been vaccinated for more than 7 days after appointment date were investigated through stratified random sampling in 11 sub-district of Yangpu District.Information was collected by a self-designed questionnaire.Two rounds of questionnaires were conducted in May and October, 2016 with 330 parents involved in each round.

ResultsIn surveys on 660 parents, more than 89% of parents heard about the Shandong vaccine event and 43.4% of them knew of the exact category of the illegal vaccine.Internet and TV were the two main channels for parents to access the event and both proportions were more than 43%.With all parents, 44.4% of them were impacted by the Vaccine Event but only 2.3% of them did not have their children vaccinated and 97.9% of them were considering vaccination for their children afterwards.As the first and the second round surveys were compared, the awareness rate of the Event declined from 93.6% to 89.1% (χ²=4.32, P=0.04).Correspondingly, the proportion of unvaccinated children affected by the Vaccine Event dropped from 3.6% to 0.9%(χ²=18.03, P < 0.01).

ConclusionThe Vaccine Event does not cause a significant impact on parental acceptance of vaccination in Yangpu District, but the parents do not have confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy.We should continue to conduct health promotion and communication activities to enhance public confidence in the immunization program.