An Outbreak of Varicella among Schoolchildren in Taipei

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Chao-Chih Lai¹  Donald Dah-Shyong Jiang²  Szu-Ching Chen³ 

[1] Emergency Department of Taipei City Hospital, Ren-Ai Branch, R.O.C, Taiwan;FETP, Centers for Disease Control, R.O.C, Taiwan;Health Center of an Elementary School in Taipei, R.O.C, Taiwan;

关键词: Vaccination Coverage;    Vaccine Effectiveness;    Vaccine Coverage;    Varicella Vaccine;    Varicella Vaccination;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-226

 received in 2010-06-03, accepted in 2011-04-12,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe reported cases with varicella have not decreased and outbreaks of varicella among vaccinated children continue to be reported 9 years after the public vaccination program in Taipei. We investigated an outbreak to determine varicella vaccine coverage and effectiveness.MethodsAn outbreak occurred in an elementary school which located in southern Taipei from April 2007 through May 2007. A retrospect cohort study was performed by using a self-administered questionnaire for parents.ResultsTen out of sixteen varicella cases were vaccinated. Overall vaccine coverage was 71.2%. The common reasons for not receiving varicella vaccine were that varicella vaccine was unavailable because the student didn't live in Taipei (29.4%) or the children could not be vaccinated due to certain illnesses (23.5%). The sensitivity and specificity of self-reported vaccination status was 0.900 (95% CI: 0.864, 0.935) and 0.611 (95% CI: 0.514, 0.701).The vaccine effectiveness was 69.3%-100.0% against any disease severity of varicella. Overall vaccine effectiveness against moderate or severe varicella was 85.5%. Attending cram school was associated with the risk of developing the varicella illness (RR: 13.39; 95% CI: 5.38, 33.31). Unvaccinated students tended to show moderate to severe (>50 lesions) afflictions of the disease (RR: 4.17; 95% CI: 1.15, 15.14).ConclusionsBecause of the low vaccination coverage, varicella outbreaks continue to be reported in Taipei. Increasing vaccine coverage and second dose vaccination for increasing vaccine effectiveness may be considered.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Lai et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.