Background
: Influenza is a respiratory infectious disease with high morbidity and relatively high mortality which occurs every winter. Therefore, influenza vaccination is recommended annually for high risk groups. However, the vaccination rate is not very high. It is well known that influenza vaccination prevents influenza, and some reports show partial preventive effects for the common cold. Therefore, the authors implemented this study to find out the preventive effects of influenza vaccination for influenza and the common cold.

Methods : The study period was six months form October 1997 to March 1998, and the subjects were chosen from those who visited seven Family Practice Clinics and two Family Practice Outpatient Departments of University Hospital. The vaccination group composed of those who received influenza vaccination during the period and the control group was those who did not receive the vaccination with age difference ±3 years and of same gender.
The study was done by a survey questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 8.0 and chi-square test, t-test, and logistic regression was implemented.

Results : The number of vaccination group was 223, the number of control group was 214, and the total subjects were 437 persons. Influenza occurred in 4 persons(1.8%) for the vaccination group, and 12 persons(5.6%) for the control group which showed significant difference(p=0.032). The common cold occurred in 69.1% of vaccination group and in 71.0% of control group with no difference. However, the duration of the common cold was 6.0 days for the vaccination group which was slightly shorter than 7.5 days for the control group(p=0.088), and the frequency of the common cold was 1.49 times for the vaccination group and 1.84 times for the control group(p=0.033). Logistic regression analysis showed that the relative risk of influenza for the vaccination group was 0.261(p=0.032), which meant 73.9% protective effect for influenza, but not for the common cold.

Conclusion : Influenza vaccination can protect people from influenza, but did not protect them from common cold. However, it can lessen the frequency and duration of the common cold.

Background
: Since the Independence in 1945, the Republic of Korea(ROK) has maintained fundamentally the liberal health care system by the influence of U.S.A. Therefore, as in the case of U.S.A., the primary health care system of ROK has fallen in the chaos. Recently, the new government of ROK seems to retry the introduction of 'Family Doctor Registration System(FDRS)' in spite of the 1996's failure. In order to conduct FDRS efficiently, there should be a thorough investigation on the opinions of doctors and people in the community. This study was conducted with a view to collecting necessary information regarding the implementation of FDRS.

Methods : By mailing, the self-administered questionnaires were collected twice during March 18 to May 12 in 1998. The questionnaire had been prepared trough several discussions, pretest, and final correction by five family physicians and two health care policy professors. The subjects consisted of 2,093 family physicians.

Results : Though the overall response rate was only 28.2%(591) subjects, age distribution for the study subjects was similar to that of average family physicians. The subjects consisted of 451 males and 138 females. The number of those whose age was less than 40 was 49.9%(195). 'The group that agrees with the introduction of FDRS' was 58.5% of all respondents; 'the group that objects' 14.4%; and 'the group undetermined' 24.7%. The 73.6% of all respondents had negative opinion on increased administrative work. Only 21.3% expected their net income to increase. On multiple logistic regression analysis, relatively large city rather than metropolitan Seoul, the smaller number of visiting patients a month, regular resident training experience, and male sex resulted in having a significant positive relationship with the introduction of FDRS. Further analyses are called for to identify differences of opinions between family physicians and single specialty medical practitioners

Conclusion : The results of this survey should be reflected into the health care policy when retrying to implement FDRS in Korea.