The public's preventive strategies in response to the pandemic influenza A/H1N1 in France: Distribution and determinants
Introduction
The outbreak of the novel A/H1N1 influenza virus in April 2009 and its rapid global spread have raised concerns over a potentially catastrophic influenza pandemic in both scientific and lay communities. Policy for mitigating the epidemiological and socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic constituted at this time a top priority for many public health organizations. In France, the effort to prevent and to control the A/H1N1 pandemic influenza went through different stage, as indicated in Table 1 Broadly speaking, two major phases can be identified. Firstly, in the absence of available vaccine, the public was encouraged to adopt a range of preventive behaviors including hygienic and social distancing measures. Secondly, members of high-priority groups, then the whole population, were recommended to get immunized against the virus (HCSP, 2009). In France, such as in the majority of the western countries, public health authorities failed however to convince a large number of the population to get vaccinated. Nonetheless, the vaccination might be viewed by the public as one possibility among a large variety of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical measures and we don't know the distribution of the health preventive strategies actually adopted, or the social and cognitive factors that determined them (Chapman and Coups, 1999).
Section snippets
The study
The empirical data were collected in France through computer-assisted phone interviews of 1003 adults in December 2009. A proportional random digit dialing was used to select the survey participants across the country. Moreover, a stratified selection procedure based on regions and communes population with quotas on respondents' gender, age, and occupation was carried out to ensure the national representativeness of the sample (cooperation rate = 45.9%). Respondents were informed that the survey
Discussion
In this case of a new public health program, for which a variety of protective measures was both possible and recommended, a majority of individuals had chosen a selective protective strategy rather than a cumulative one. Overall, although more than 80% of the population had declared a protective strategy, it could be assumed that a substitutive effect had gained a large majority; furthermore only the “mixed protection strategy” can be considered as compliant with the public health
Conflict of interest statement
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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