Canada's eight-step vaccine safety program: Vaccine literacy

Abstract

Francais en page 608 Immunization to control serious infectious diseases has been one of the outstanding achievements of preventive health medicine. But hand in hand with the growing success of vaccine prevention of major scourges such as polio, measles, invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b disease and hepatitis B has come a rise in parental concerns regarding the safety of vaccines in a number of countries (1,2). Some parents are now so troubled by vaccine safety that they are choosing not to have their children immunized, sometimes with tragic results (3–5). Fear engendered by the purported links between vaccines and conditions such as autism, sudden unexpected death in infancy, demyelinating disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders is a symptom of mistrust in the safety of the vaccine system as a whole. Every new allegation of a vaccine safety concern fuels the mistrust. A growing number of parents simply do not believe that the vaccine system is safe. Erosion of public trust in vaccines seems to be occurring despite more than two decades of effort to educate the public about the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases and the benefits and excellent safety profiles of the recommended childhood vaccines. An expanded approach to ensure and, if necessary, restore public confidence in vaccines is needed. Health care providers who are involved in immunization delivery have a key role to play. The present Paediatric Infectious Disease Note outlines a strategy for helping health care providers increase public trust in vaccines.