For decades billions of people have been using vaccines, receiving them safely every year. There are several new vaccines under development that, if approved, will help prevent more life threatening diseases such as COVID-19, Zika or Nipah viruses or improve the effectiveness of existing vaccines. WHO works to make sure that everyone, everywhere is protected by safe and effective vaccines by helping countries to set up rigorous safety systems for vaccines, alongside other medicines and work to develop the strictest standards for their regulation.
Despite all those precautions, some people influenced by a complex mix of historical, political, social and behavioral determinants are reluctant or refuse to be vaccinated. Due to that Vaccine hesitancy, these populations are exposed to many diseases that they could have avoided. While vaccine hesitancy is as old as vaccination itself the nature of the challenge changes over time. Digital communication, and social media in particular, catalyze the rapid spread of false information, threatening public health. In 2019, the WHO named ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among the top 10 threats to global health, citing its potential to undermine global efforts to eradicate polio, eliminate measles and contain cervical cancer.
According to WHO vaccines save more than 5 lives every minute, helping people to grow up and grow old in good health. Thanks to vaccines, more than 18 million people who would otherwise have been paralyzed by polio are able to walk, play, and dance today. Vaccinated children do better at school and their communities benefit economically. Vaccines advance global welfare and are among the most cost-effective means of doing so. Despite this, 20 million children miss out on vaccines annually and nearly 30 percent of deaths among children under 5 years of age are caused by vaccine-preventable diseases.
Vaccine hesitancy is a key driver of under-vaccination. As with all medicines, every vaccine needs to go through extensive and rigorous testing before it can be introduced in a country. Once they are in use, they must be continuously monitored to make sure they are safe for the people who receive them. Anti-vaccination actors clearly often operate from a strategy. Current evidence suggests they can have significantly greater reach than vaccine advocates and reach the undecided with content that is often more persuasive. On Facebook, anti-vaccine pages are ‘heavily entangled’ with undecided users, while pro-science sites are talking to the converted.
During an epidemic one can observe an overabundance of information that can lead people to confusion. It’s not easy in this flood of information to distinguish the true from the false for some, and the resurgence of social media which have no filter and in which all socio-professional strata of society can be found is not helpful to counter the spread of misinformation. Realizing these facts, some actions need to be taken by stakeholders to tackle the spread of misinformation.
Medias play an important role in the dissemination of information and in disinformation campaigns, which is why they must be used to counter that. Don’t they say “who has the media has the power? It is possible to fight misinformation with the same weapons that produced it. While traditional media are easy to regulate, social media are all over the place and it is important to show people how to use them through trainings on how to use the networks and also how to combat fake news and always verify the source of an information before sharing.
It is important to develop and empower scientific research in Africa; encourage access to scientific training and promote entrepreneurship; encourage the consumption of made-in-Africa products in the health sector; increase North-South and South-South collaboration in scientific research; explain the distinction between information, misinformation and false information and vote on sanctions for dissemination of fake news. It is necessary to use advocacy to get the owners of successful websites to help scientific research. We have seen for example how Whatsapp decided to fight against the spread of fake news by restricting the sharing of data from 20 people to 5 people. This is a considerable effort that can be pushed further if advocacy actions are well conducted
Communication is the most cross-cutting discipline that can help counter misinformation; indeed, media and non-media actions can be taken to convince sceptics about the merits of vaccination such as press conferences, advertising on vaccine acceptability, publicize the number of people saved by vaccines, always communicate about the effects of the vaccine and ensure that people receive good information from reliable sources. Communication messages should be tailored to the identified targets and risk communication trainings should be organized for journalists and communication officers.
WHO experts together with external scientists, are continuously monitoring and updating the safety profile of more than 20 vaccines. With external partners, it also helps countries investigate and communicate if potential issues of concern arise. Besides this, the African Union created Africa Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention to give an African response to Africa health issues by strengthening the capacity, capability and partnerships of Africa’s public health institutions to detect and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats and outbreaks based on science, policy and data-driven interventions and programme. Africa CDC is a specialized technical institution of the African Union established in 2017 to support public health initiatives of Member States.
Cajo Alemoka
