China provides less paediatric immunizations than many other countries. Attempts to make vaccines mandatory in the future may run counter to parents’ choices for shot-limiting. The purpose of this study was to determine Chinese parents’ preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for programmatic aspects of immunisation services. In 2017, parents of young infants aged 3 months who visited immunisation clinics in Shanghai, China, completed a discrete choice experiment (DCE) on vaccination programme attributes such as waiting time at the clinic, number of shots before 7 months, number of injections per visit, cost per visit, and location of the shot. Using logistic regression, we calculated preference utilities and WTP.

Caregivers have shown better usefulness for less waiting time, less office visits, reduced costs of immunizations and less co-administered injections. During the first six months of their kid, the parents were prepared to pay 112 RMB to avoid another 10 minutes of waiting at each appointment. The RMB was 474 to prevent further visits to the office and the RMB 703 to prevent further adjustment at each session. With China expanding its range of public-supported vaccines, public health officials must offset the strong preferences of Chinese parents, potentially through combination vaccines, in order to restrict their total number of office visits and the number of injections delivered at each appointment.

Reference: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2020.1712937

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