Family impact of Rotavirus Gastroenteritis in Taiwan and Vietnam: an Ethnographic Study

BMC Infectious Diseases

Research Article

Phuc Le Hoang¹  Lung-Huang Lin²  Hung-Chang Lee³  Chieh-Chung Lin⁴  Sònia Rojas-Farreras⁵  Montse Pedros⁵  Núria Lara⁶  Megan A. O’Brien⁷ 

[1] Children’s Hospital # 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam;Department of Pediatrics, Cathay General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan & School of Medicine, Fu-Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan;Department of Pediatrics, MacKay Memorial Hospital, Hsinchu, Taiwan;Department of Pediatrics, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;IMS Health, Barcelona, Spain;IMS Health, Barcelona, Spain;IMS Health, Doctor Ferran 25-27 2°, 08034, Barcelona, Spain;Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA;

关键词: Rotavirus infection;    Asia;    Taiwan;    Vietnam;    Family impact;    Ethnographic study;    Focus groups;    Economic impact;    Emotional impact;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12879-015-0968-y

 received in 2014-05-15, accepted in 2015-05-29,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPrior to the introduction of rotavirus vaccines, rotavirus was the leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and young children, and it continues to be the leading cause in countries without vaccination programs. Rotavirus gastroenteritis results in substantial economic burden and has a pronounced effect on the family of those who are ill. Both in Taiwan and in Vietnam, rotavirus illness is viewed as a priority disease. This study assessed, in Taiwan and Vietnam, the impact of rotavirus gastroenteritis on the family among a group of parents whose children had recently been hospitalized for this illness.MethodsIn the first half of 2013, parents of children who had been hospitalized due to rotavirus infection were recruited from hospitals in Taiwan (n = 12) and Vietnam (n = 22), and participated in focus group sessions or in-depth ethnographic interviews.ResultsIn both countries, the results point to a substantial burden on the parents concerning emotions and logistics of daily tasks, and to considerable disruptions of the family routine. Taiwanese parents reported satisfaction with the health care system, a great deal of effort to suppress emotions, a fair amount of knowledge about rotavirus, and little extra costs related to the illness. On the other hand, parents in Vietnam expressed concern about the emotional well-being of and the health care treatments for their children, were less knowledgeable regarding rotavirus infection, and experienced a substantial financial burden due to indirect costs that were related to accessing treatment.ConclusionsFamilies in Taiwan and Vietnam suffer from a considerable economic and emotional burden related to rotavirus gastroenteritis. One way to substantially reduce this burden is to provide universal and affordable rotavirus vaccination to susceptible children, especially since cost-effectiveness studies have demonstrated that universal vaccination would be safe and efficacious against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis in these countries.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© O'Brien et al. 2015. 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/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.