Evaluation of the adverse events following immunization surveillance system in Guruve district, Mashonaland Central 2017.
Introduction
An adverse event following immunisation is any untoward medical occurrence which follows vaccination. Frequency of adverse events ranges from 13% to 34% and they should be reported regardless of severity. From the beginning of 2016 to mid-2017, Guruve district in Zimbabwe did not report any AEFIs. This suggests the surveillance system may be failing to detect adverse events. We therefore evaluated the AEFI surveillance system in Guruve district.


Methods
We conducted a surveillance system evaluation using the updated Centers for Disease Control guidelines for evaluating public health surveillance systems. We interviewed health workers and caregivers of babies under 2 years in Guruve district. We also reviewed all records on AEFI surveillance for the period of January 2016 to November 2017.


Results
We recruited 31 health workers and 33 caregivers into the study. Between January 2016 and mid-2017, 39% of the caregivers had children who had suffered AEFIs and 45% of the health workers had encountered AEFIs but none had been notified. The main reasons for failure to report AEFIs included health workers' fear of personal consequences and caregivers thinking that an adverse event was not serious enough to report. Knowledge of the surveillance system was good amongst the majority of health workers. All the resources needed by the surveillance system were available.


Conclusion
We concluded that health workers in Guruve district were afraid to report adverse events following immunization and caregivers were reluctant to report mild adverse events hence the surveillance system was performing poorly and was not useful. However, the stability of the system and the good knowledge gives a good foundation for improving the surveillance system.
['Constantine|Mutata|M|', 'Cremance|Tshuma|T|', 'Juru|Tsitsi Patience|TP|', 'Gerald|Shambira|S|', 'Notion|Gombe Tafara|GT|', 'Peter|Nsubuga|N|', 'Mufuta|Tshimanga|T|']
D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems D017028:Caregivers D005260:Female D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice D006282:Health Personnel D006801:Humans D007114:Immunization D007223:Infant D007407:Interviews as Topic D008297:Male D062486:Public Health Surveillance D014612:Vaccines D015030:Zimbabwe
surveillance Guruve vaccination Zimbabwe AEFI