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(MENAFN – The Conversation) It has been nine months since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a ‘public health emergency of international concern’. Since then, more than 44 million cases have been recorded and over a million lives lost. Economic costs are measured in trillions of dollars. The global recovery will take years.
A safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be developed in record time and could be approved for production, distribution and acceptance by 2021. Public health experts say at least 70% of any community must be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine to achieve an acceptable level of immunity to protect its members.
We recently interviewed 13,426 people in 19 countries. We have included two of the most populous and visible nations in Africa, Nigeria and South Africa, which are among the most affected by COVID-19 on the continent.
Overall, we found that 71.5% of participants said they would take a “proven safe and effective vaccine” while 14% would reject it completely. A further 14% said they would hesitate to take the vaccine.
But that average figure is deceptive. He was lifted by the favorable responses from two Asian countries which also recorded very high confidence in the government’s health recommendations. More than 80% of Chinese respondents and 75% of South Koreans said they would accept a vaccine. South Africans have come closer than any other country to the standard of 70%, almost 65%. But only 46.3% of Nigerians said they would. This is slightly higher than the results we found in Spain, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Ecuador.
Hesitation
These vaccine hesitants are not necessarily vaccine opponents. A large number of them constantly vaccinate their children against numerous childhood diseases. However, it should be noted that the increasingly well-coordinated global anti-vaccine movement has resurfaced to challenge the very reality of COVID-19 and the usefulness of a new vaccine to prevent it. They took advantage of social media platforms to promote these doubts.
We also sought to determine how much confidence people would have had in a COVID-19 vaccine if their employer recommended it. Just over three in five (61.4%) of all our respondents said they do so. The number has dropped to less than half of South Africans (46%) and Nigerians (44%).
Our data confirm a worrying trend towards vaccine hesitation that has been found in other global and national studies. Professor Heidi Larson, co-author of our paper, and her team from the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently reported on trends in vaccine confidence observed in 149 countries between 2015 and 2019. They found that political instability and religious extremism have been critical factors in the decline of vaccine confidence in many of these countries.
Recent political unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million people, does not bode well for a successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Only South Africa and Ethiopia have recorded more COVID-19 cases on the continent.
Many public health workers also recall a massive boycott of polio vaccination in northern Nigeria. It was caused by a single rumor and not an adverse event. This boycott led to years of more infections and polio deaths in Nigeria and delayed polio eradication from the continent as a whole.
So what needs to be done to get on track for a successful African COVID-19 vaccination program?
Going forward
As scientists, we should help health leaders prepare now with education and dialogue to set adequate expectations for when a coronavirus vaccine might be available. We must build vaccine literacy with effective communication and community commitment to acceptance on a country-by-country, village-by-village basis, taking into account specific community issues, concerns or misconceptions, and working with religious and civil leaders and influencers locals.
We also need to help people become more fluent about vaccinations – are they safe? Will they protect me and my family? Do I have to be vaccinated to be able to work? Will everyone be able to get it? Will vaccination sterilize me or my children?
And we need to be realistic that none of this information and support will truly convince people to accept COVID-19 vaccination, or any other, in the absence of genuine trust from society. Without mutual trust, we may not be able to rebuild economies and return to anything that comes close to “normal” life.
It would be tragic if we developed, manufactured and distributed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and people refused to take them, when health infrastructure and equipment levels cannot stem the pandemic.
Two authors of this study, Drs. Ratzan and Larson, are co-leaders of a recently launched global coalition: CONVINCE [COVID-19 New Vaccine Information Communication and Engagement]. This initiative is led by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Confidence Project and Wilton Park, a part of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Numerous African public health leaders have already joined.
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