Vaccine Safety
Overall SPRINT-KIDS Project Lead: Dr. Stephen Freedman
Vaccine Safety SPRINT-KIDS Co-Leads: Dr. Mohamed Eltorki and Dr. Yaron Finkelstein
What: Monitoring Vaccine Safety
Who: Children less than 18 years of age
When: Children arrive at a PERC hospital following a potential reaction to a vaccine
Where: Children who arrive at 1 of 15 tertiary care pediatric hospital that are part of the PERC network
Why: To learn more about vaccine safety, assess the frequency and possible associations between vaccines and adverse events, and monitor their severity and impact on children, ensuring the safety of vaccines administered to children in Canada.
How: Project team members review records of children presenting to participating institution with symptoms possibly associated to a vaccine-related adverse event.
Getting vaccinated can protect children from serious illness that can be result into hospitalization, disability and rarely death. Vaccines, like other medications, can have potential side effects and cause reactions, though severe reactions are very uncommon. Nonetheless, it is crucial that we ensure that the vaccines administered are safe and this is best performed by conducting continuous active surveillance for potential severe vaccine side effects. After receiving a vaccine, it is common to have temporary side effects like fussiness, redness, swelling and soreness. This is the body’s natural response as it is working to build up immunity against the disease. Most side effects do not disrupt a child’s daily activities.
The SPRINT-KIDS Vaccine Safety Surveillance Project aims to capture data on potentially unfavourable events following vaccination that lead to children being brought for emergency department care or requiring hospitalization. Adverse events following immunization, are unfavorable medical occurrences that happen after a patient receives a vaccine, but are not necessarily caused by the vaccine. These can include an unusual symptom, abnormal laboratory finding, or development of a disease.
In this Project, team members will collect data for children less than 18 years of age who present to any of Canada's 15 pediatric hospitals with possible symptoms, laboratory abnormalities or diagnoses that may be related to a vaccine they received. A standardized approach is used to collect data related to the event and this information is shared with the Public Health Agency of Canada, who, along with public health authorities in each province and territory, actively monitors the safety of vaccines authorized for use in Canada. By conducting this work, we will support the Public Health Agency of Canada’s mandate of ensure vaccine safety and that the benefits and potential risks of vaccination are known to support informed decision making.