Practice factsheet: Offering the flu vaccine to children in three primary schools (Ireland)

In Ireland, children from 2 to 17 are eligible to receive the flu vaccine from the Irish National Immunisation Office of Health Service Executive (HSE) free of charge. Despite this, vaccine uptake in previous seasonal influenza programmes has been low. To address this and increase vaccination rates, a pilot campaign was launched in primary schools to administer the doses in a school setting rather than at the general practitioner’s practice or at the pharmacy. This was based on personalised vaccination advice after information was provided to the parents and their consent had been obtained. This practice showed excellent results by significantly increasing uptake, and its efficient design is easily transferrable to other settings.