Spatial and temporal risk as drivers for adoption of foot and mouth disease vaccination

Ashley F Railey,Tiziana Lembo,Guy H Palmer,Gabriel M Shirima,Thomas L Marsh

doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.06.069

Abstract

Identifying the drivers of vaccine adoption decisions under varying levels of perceived disease risk and benefit provides insight into what can limit or enhance vaccination uptake. To address the relationship of perceived benefit relative to temporal and spatial risk, we surveyed 432 pastoralist households in northern Tanzania on vaccination for foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Unlike human health vaccination decisions where beliefs regarding adverse, personal health effects factor heavily into perceived risk, decisions for animal vaccination focus disproportionately on dynamic risks to animal productivity. We extended a commonly used stated preference survey methodology, willingness to pay, to elicit responses for a routine vaccination strategy applied biannually and an emergency strategy applied in reaction to spatially variable, hypothetical outbreaks. Our results show that households place a higher value on vaccination as perceived risk and household capacity to cope with resource constraints increase, but that the episodic and unpredictable spatial and temporal spread of FMD contributes to increased levels of uncertainty regarding the benefit of vaccination. In addition, concerns regarding the performance of the vaccine underlie decisions for both routine and emergency vaccination, indicating a need for within community messaging and documentation of the household and population level benefits of FMD vaccination.

Highlights

Uncertainty surrounding health decisions stems from unknown gains in personal wellbeing relative to the perceived costs of undertaking the intervention
The test rejected the estimation of both vaccination strategies jointly in favor of separate models (Supplementary material), supporting the concept that different decision-making processes influence each type of vaccination
The mean willingness to pay (WTP) of emergency vaccination was around 5400 Tsh

Summary

Introduction

Uncertainty surrounding health decisions stems from unknown gains in personal wellbeing relative to the perceived costs of undertaking the intervention. The implications of individual vaccination in contributing to population immunity further complicates the decision. Perceptions of disease risk are dynamic and may markedly increase as disease outbreaks are reported closer to the individual [2,3,4]. By this time much of the potential for inducing population

Methods

Results

Conclusion