Covid-19 Updates

This is why Covid-19 vaccination numbers are low in South Africa

There is a narrative that vaccine hesitancy fuelled by misinformation and distrust is causing South Africans to avoid getting their Covid-19 jab. While vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxxers are contributing factors, experts and data obtained from regular surveys show that vaccine accessibility is a far bigger obstacle than hesitancy, mistrust, and conspiracy theories.

Access to vaccination is limited by barriers such as the location and numbers of vaccination sites, difficulties getting time off work, the cost of transport, not having an ID book, and lengthy vaccination queues, especially in lower-income and more rural areas.

Surveys by the Medical Research Council and the University of Johannesburg suggest that over 70% of South Africans are in favour of being vaccinated.

A “moveable middle”, or some 20% of people are equivocal, want more data, and believe some of the misinformation or disinformation — and often inadvertently and/or carelessly spread it.

The surveys suggest that only 10% (possibly even fewer) of people in the country are die-hard anti-vaxxers.

The full article on the issue of vaccine hesitancy, first published on Spotlight, is reproduced below (with permission, under a Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0 licence).

Initially hamstrung by low and uncertain supplies of Covid-19 vaccines, government is arguably now in a better position to campaign actively to accelerate vaccine demand, albeit in the midst of an often-harmful viral “infodemic”.

Dr Peter Benjamin, co-founder of HealthEnabled, a firm of “digital health architects”, and Professor Glenda Gray, CEO of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), say with a more secure vaccine supply in the last two or so months, the focus has shifted to overcoming vaccine hesitancy and accelerating the rollout.

Gray also played a critical role in getting the Sisonke study off the ground. Close to 500,000 healthcare workers were vaccinated in the Sisonke study prior to the launch of South Africa’s mass vaccination programme on 17 May.

Dr Caroline Lee, the founder of the Healthcare Workers Care Network and an anaesthetist at the Covid-19 coalface, also shared with Spotlight how anti-vaccine protests and sentiment have sowed despair and hopelessness among many beleaguered medical professionals dealing with severely ill and dying patients at the peak of Covid-19 waves.

What emerges from these experts and several social listening surveys appears to be an evolving answer to the slow vaccination uptake dilemma. The evidence suggests that hesitancy, mistrust, and conspiracy theories actually contribute far less to vaccine hesitancy than vaccine accessibility.

Access to vaccination is limited by barriers such as the location and numbers of vaccination sites, difficulties getting time off work, the cost of transport, not having an ID book, and lengthy vaccination queues, especially in lower-income and more rural areas.

Those rural provinces that have taken vaccination teams from village to village (like Limpopo) have recorded the best vaccine uptake, especially among the vulnerable elderly.

Source – IOL

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