Regional workshop on strengthening vaccine safety surveillance and capacity-building for causality assessment: Bangkok, Thailand, 20–22 September 2022

The main objective of the meeting was to strengthen vaccine safety surveillance and causality assessment (CA) of serious adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) for all vaccines in the South-East (SE) Asia Region. 

The specific objectives were:

 - providing updated information on vaccine safety surveillance, including new tools developed by WHO for causality assessment and data management;

 - reviewing regional and country successes and challenges with regard to AEFI surveillance for vaccines used in national immunization programmes and COVID-19 vaccines, and identifying priority actions for strengthening AEFI reporting at national and subnational levels;

 - reviewing adverse events of special interest (AESIs) and other active surveillance mechanisms that have been established in the Region/globally and their contribution to further increase sensitivity of safety surveillance; and

 - discussing how vaccine safety surveillance can be used to mitigate vaccine hesitancy.

Dr Jos Vandelaer, WHO Representative to Thailand, opened the meeting on behalf of Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia and the opening address is attached as Annex 1.

The participants in the workshop included managers of national expanded programmes on immunization (EPIs), focal persons looking after vaccine safety surveillance at the national level, National Regulatory Authority (NRA) representatives, chairpersons of the national AEFI committees, EPI/AEFI surveillance focal points from WHO country offices and nominated United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Office staff.

The workshop was facilitated by members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, the Chairperson of the Causality Assessment Subcommittee of the National AEFI Committee, India, staff members from the vaccine safety surveillance and pharmacovigilance team from WHO HQ, Immunization and Vaccine Development (IVD) unit at the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia (WHO-SEARO), including consultants from), and the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC).