Evidence from 22 African countries shows that low confidence in authorities affects vaccine intake

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IWhen the world is paying attention COVID-19 vaccineIn an era when the world is focusing on the Covid-19 vaccine, the World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized the importance of routine immunization against diseases such as measles, tetanus and polio.

Vaccination saves millions of lives each year, but advances in vaccines coverage It remains very uneven, both domestically and domestically. The situation is of particular concern in Africa, despite significant progress over the last two decades. Almost half The proportion of unvaccinated and unvaccinated children in the world lives in this area.

Even if vaccines are available, one barrier to progress is vaccine hesitation. In 2019, WHO hesitates to vaccine Top 10 Global Health Threats.. Building trust in vaccination This is an important aspect of this year’s WHO vaccination campaign.

Vaccine hesitage is not new.Distrust of the authorities It is shown Negatively impacting vaccine intake in high- and middle-income countries such as Russia, the United States, France and Croatia. However, few studies quantify vaccine repellent in low-income countries.

Our latest the study Immunization rates for children in African countries show low in areas where locals show a high level of distrust of local governments.

Finding ways to improve vaccination uptake will help countries reach their Sustainable Development Goals of reducing under-five mortality to less than 25 per 1,000 births by 2030. There is a possibility. Two-thirds Of the 53 countries that are not on the road to achieving this goal, they are in Africa.

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Linking vaccination intake to trust in authorities

We examined the status of vaccinations of more than 160,000 children in 22 African countries and matched them with information on the level of people’s trust in local and national authorities.

For information on vaccination status, please see Demographics and health surveys.. Information on the trust of institutional investors Afrobarometer survey.. Reliability was measured by the highest local governments in each country. We calculated the percentage of the population who said they had no trust in the president, parliament, electoral system, courts, or local governments.

Various socio-economic characteristics at the individual, home and community levels can affect the affordability and accessibility of vaccination services and thus the intake of vaccines. Our statistical analysis isolated the effects of institutional distrust from these variables. To that end, we compared households in the same area with similar access to medical facilities and similar socio-economic characteristics.

We found that the higher the distrust, the lower the vaccination rate.

With a 10 percentage point increase in distrust of local governments, children living in the area were 11 percent more likely not to receive any of the eight basic vaccines. These were BCG vaccines (to protect against tuberculosis). Three doses of diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus vaccines. Three doses of polio vaccine. Vaccine dose, including measles. And these children were 3.4% less likely to get all eight basic vaccines.

Our study is the first comprehensive attempt to quantify the role of institutional distrust in vaccine intake in Africa. However, our findings are consistent with qualitative case studies from many African countries. These include Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Nigeria And South Sudan..

The most famous case of vaccination on the continent is the boycott of the polio vaccination campaign in the early 2000s. Nigeria.. It led to the outbreak of a disease that was almost eradicated.

The importance of institutional distrust was also emphasized during the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. In Liberia, for example, the community rejected health care workers and did not follow health recommendations. Such resistance was not explained by people’s understanding of the symptoms and transmission of Ebola.Rather respondents Shown They could not trust the agency’s ability and integrity to protect them.

Policy implications

There is an urgent need to recognize the importance of distrust in vaccination campaigns. the study Vaccination has shown to be one of the most cost-effective public health interventions.who Estimate The vaccination prevents the deaths of 23 to 3 million people each year.

In a world where global deployment of vaccines is considered important to end the COVID-19 pandemic, increased immunization appears to be more important than ever.Pandemic triggers cancellation of measles vaccination campaign and provides important routine immunization services Danger..

The clear implication of our findings is that the benefits of vaccines should be better communicated. You need to deal with myths and misunderstandings. But raising awareness is not enough unless people trust the people who provide the information and vaccination services.

It takes a lot of effort to build trust. Building trust usually begins with recognizing people’s concerns and using terms that are not confusing or too technical to provide reliable information from a reliable source.

To guide the policy, it is important to identify where the distrust comes from and engage with the community and trusted leaders. 1 Example So-called core A successful project to address vaccine repellent in northeastern Nigeria. They have created a reliable space for community dialogue in difficult environments.

Our study calls for expanding and adapting these initiatives to protect 2.6 million children under the age of five. Estimated Risk of dying from a vaccine-preventable disease by 2030.

Jean-Francois Maystadt,Professor, Lancaster University; Carre Hirvonen, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) ,and Nick Stoop, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Antwerp

This article will be republished from conversation Under a Creative Commons license.Read Original work..

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