Practical issues for developing your AEFI investigation procedures

• Decide what should be investigated (develop the reporting system around these events), based on case definitions and identification of AEFI clusters (see below for cluster investigation).
• Decide who should conduct investigations and in what timeframe.
• Design the investigation procedure and forms to collect all relevant information for determining cause and assessing causality.
• Have a system in place for collecting and testing any samples of suspect vaccines and diluents.
• Have a system in place to conduct post mortems and test samples from patients (blood samples, etc.)
• Decide which events require high-level versus lower-level investigation.