Has your child had a bad reaction to a vaccine or what you think is a vaccine injury?
Did you or your pediatrician report it?
Reporting Side Effects to VAERS
The CDC advises that “all significant adverse events that occur after vaccination of adults and children, even if you are not sure whether the vaccine caused the adverse event.”
But VAERS isn’t for everyone.
VAERS is for anyone who gives or receives a licensed vaccine in the United States.
Global Vaccine Side Effect Reporting Systems
What to folks do outside the United States?
Not surprisingly, most countries have a reporting system for possible adverse events to vaccines that is similar to VAERS, including, but not limited to:
- Australia – report to the Therapeutic Goods Administration
- Canada – report possible Adverse Events following Immunization (AEFI) to the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS)
- France – report to L’Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé
- Ireland – report to Health Products Regulatory Agency
- Italy – report to the Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco
- Japan – report to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
- UK – the Yellow Card Scheme
You can also report possible side effects directly to vaccine manufacturers.
And like our Vaccine Safety Datalink, in addition to having a passive reporting system, like VAERS, many countries have an active vaccine safety surveillance system to make sure that their vaccines are safe:
- Australia – AusVaxSafety monitors 156 surveillance sites
- Canada – IMPACT or Canada’s Immunization Monitoring Program ACTive that actively monitors “12 Canadian centres, which represent about 90% of all tertiary care pediatric beds in Canada” for “adverse events following immunization, vaccine failures and selected infectious diseases that are, or will be, vaccine preventable.”
- UK – the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)
A lot of this work is also done as part of the World Health Organization’s Global Vaccine Safety Initiative (GVSI). In fact, many (about 110) WHO member countries report to the VigiBase system that is actively monitored by the WHO’s Uppsala Monitoring Centre.
What to Know About Global Vaccine Side Effect Reporting Systems
Passive and active vaccine side effect reporting systems in countries around the world help to make sure that our vaccines are safe.
More on Global Vaccine Side Effect Reporting Systems
- Study – Operational lessons learned in conducting a multi-country collaboration for vaccine safety signal verification and hypothesis testing: The global vaccine safety multi country collaboration initiative.
- Study – Vaxtracker: Active on-line surveillance for adverse events following inactivated influenza vaccine in children
- SmartVax
- Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Report an Adverse Event
- About VAERS
- Instructions for Completing the VAERS On-Line Form
- WHO – The Global Vaccine Safety Initiative (GVSI)
- Eurdavigilance – Pharmacovigilance in the European Economic Area
- CIOMS Working Group on Vaccine Safety
- Accelerated Development of VAccine beNefit-risk Collaboration in Europe
- Vaccine European New Integrated Collaboration Effort (VENICE) III project
- Vaccine Safety Monitoring Monitoring | Ensuring Safety
- Vaccine Side Effects and Adverse Events
- Diagnosing Vaccine Injuries
- Vaccine Safety Datalink