Pharmacists are the healthcare professionals pregnant women are least likely to speak to about maternal vaccines, a UKHSA survey has found.
Carried out in July 2025 and published last week, the survey asked 800 women who were pregnant or had given birth in the previous 12 months about their attitudes towards vaccinations during pregnancy.
Of these, only 8% said they spoke to pharmacists about routine maternal vaccines – against flu, whooping cough and RSV – while over 60% said they spoke to a midwife, some 30% spoke to a nurse at an antenatal clinic and roughly 16% spoke to a GP.
Read more: Pharmacies signposting to measles vaccination amid outbreak
When asked about which vaccine “information sources” women trusted the most, pharmacists came in last at 10%, slightly behind family at 11% - with midwives and GPs being the most popular response at 51% and 46% respectively, the survey found.
And only 14% of respondents said they had seen, heard or read “anything about vaccines for pregnant women during pregnancy” at a pharmacy, compared with 65% getting information from a midwife, 53% from an NHS leaflet and even 20% from TV.
The NHS website, however, was less common than a pharmacy with just 9% of women saying they found maternal vaccine information there.
“High-quality training”
When asked if they had seen information about a vaccine that “made them feel concerned or worried”, 15% of women said this had occurred at a pharmacy.
This was less than the 26% reported for midwives and 21% for friends or parents, the survey found.
In terms of what motivated women to get their maternal vaccines, over 75% of respondents said it was “to protect [their baby]” while some 11% said it was because a pharmacist “advised” them to get vaccinated.
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UKHSA’s survey concluded that midwives have an “increasing role in providing vaccine advice in pregnancy”.
But its findings highlighted the “value of high-quality training” for other healthcare professionals, including pharmacists, on “communicating with pregnant women to enable them to carry out these conversations confidently”.
Read more: Pharmacy sector calls for meningitis jabs after outbreak
It comes after Enfield Council said pharmacies have been used to communicate the importance of vaccination amid a measles outbreak in north London.
At a London Assembly Health Committee hearing this month, director of public health for Enfield Dudu Sher-Arami said the council has used pharmacies and other locations in the community to signpost families to the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccination.
