A comparison of causal relationship and payment standards in Different Vaccine Injury Compensation Programs

A comparison of causal relationship and payment standards in Different Vaccine Injury Compensation Programs

The establishment of Vaccine Injury Compensation Program(VICP) clarifies the causal relationship between vaccine and its probable adverse reactions. Since Germany first established VICP in 1961, other countries also set up the compensation scheme by the government or private institutions subsequently. Each country has its own review regulation according to different policies of vaccination. The process from application to approval of compensation can be divided into three parts: the eligibility of application regarding vaccine types and other relevant conditions of applicants, the causal relationship between vaccination and suspected adverse reaction, and approval of compensation and its contents. Based on similar structure, every country develops its own criteria. We have reviewed the site visit reports regarding VICP from Taiwan Centers for Disease Control from 2007 to 2016, and summarized the issues such as application of vaccinated adverse events, standards of establishing causal relationship, and the payment criteria and contents, and compared programs from other countries with ours. We recommend that the principles and criteria of causality assessment could be explicitly established, and the contents of compensation should be more clarified. In doing so shall we set up an integrated VICP scheme to maintain the balance between individual rights and public benefit.