Comparison with another study The willingness of Hong Kong healthcare workers to be vaccinated against H5N1 virus is very low when compared with the study done in a UK NHS trust, where more than half of the staff were willing to accept pre-pandemic vaccination when surveyed at a similar WHO alert level (phase 3). 16 The uptake rates for seasonal influenza vaccine were higher among our participants than in the UK study (32.9% for Hong Kong and 15.6% for UK healthcare workers), whereas the proportion willing to be vaccinated against H5N1 influenza in the UK study (57.7%) was double that in our survey (28.4%). Whether this higher willingness to accept was only temporary as a result of the well publicised H5N1 outbreak at a poultry farm in the UK when the survey was started remains to be explored.