Vaccination programmes have demonstrably reduced antibiotic resistance (AMR) development within several intensively farmed aquaculture sectors, globally. Adoption of fish vaccination programmes has been poor in Vietnam and the continued reliance on antibiotics without a therapeutic approach has promoted multiple-antibiotic resistance, resulting in treatment failure at the farm level. Understanding the social and cultural awareness towards animal health, disease management and vaccination is critical to help promote responsible use of antibiotics in any food production system. This is the first report of using psychometrically robust tools to identify the belief’s, concerns and catalysts to promote uptake of vaccination strategies within the Vietnamese catfish sector and promote responsible use of antibiotics.
A questionnaire-based survey was performed using face-to-face interviews with 400 participants in 3 provinces of Vietnam: An Giang, Dong Thap and Can Tho, between July and December 2020. The participants were representative of the striped catfish production sector and included producers with nursery, growout and combined freshwater farming systems. The questionnaire was developed using psychometrically robust measures and tools to determine: farmers perceptions and attitudes to fish disease, their beliefs about treatment of fish in their farms and their beliefs associated with vaccination and reluctance to use vaccines in their fish. A choice experiment was also conducted at the same time to identify the catalysts to promote vaccine uptake. The questionnaire was co-designed by a behavioural psychologist, aquaculture and fish disease specialists and behavioural economist. It was pilot tested prior to implementation. All data was entered into pre-formatted Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to reduce insertion errors and analysis performed using SPSS.
A summary of the results is shown in Table 1. Overall 92% of Vietnamese farmers interviewed had a high level of knowledge and awareness of fish vaccination with 67% of all participants willing to use vaccines and 7% unwilling to use fish vaccines. Those reporting a better understanding of fish disease had higher belief in the helpfulness of treatments and had fewer concerns about vaccination. In contrast, farmers reporting more disease problems (undiagnosed) had higher concerns about treatments and lower belief in vaccination. This is the first description of the catalysts to help Vietnamese farmers engage with fish vaccination. These data will be used to develop future intervention strategies and training packages to promote uptake of fish vaccines as alternatives to antibiotics in this sector.