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Why the citizens of the world should care
At a time when researchers around the world are racing to develop treatments to combat COVID-19, vaccination has become a crucial social problem.
But a new study has revealed that there is relatively low confidence in vaccines globally, despite a slight improvement in some countries around the world.
The study, conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and published in the medical journal The Lancet on Friday, draws these conclusions based on trends observed in 149 countries around the world between 2015 and 2019.
During this period, nearly 284,000 adults were surveyed and interviewed to find out how they felt about the safety, importance, and efficacy of vaccines.
“Regular monitoring of national attitudes towards vaccines is important in establishing reference levels of confidence in vaccines worldwide, allowing us to identify early warning signs of loss of confidence,” said Dr. Alex de Figueiredo , co-author of the research, at Imperial College London.
Vaccines are the most important thing these days amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but doubts about vaccines were included in the top 10 threats to global health in 2019, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
When the level of confidence that a given population has about vaccines is low, the spread of preventable diseases like polio, measles and meningitis increases, according to Imperial College.
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The results are encouraging in some areas, particularly in European countries. The study identified a slight improvement in confidence in the safety of vaccines in the UK, Ireland, Finland and France, where confidence has been extremely low since 2015.
In contrast, a “worrying trend” has been observed in Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Serbia, which have seen a substantial increase in people who strongly disagree with the idea that vaccines are safe.
These countries are affected by political instability and religious extremism that foster negative attitudes towards vaccines, according to the researchers.
Similarly, in Poland, 64% of respondents believed vaccines were safe in November 2018, compared to just 53% in December 2019. Researchers attribute this drop in confidence to the “increasing impact of a highly organized local anti-vaccine movement. “
However, low confidence in the safety of vaccines does not necessarily mean that their efficacy is questioned, according to the researchers. For example, there seems to be almost unanimous agreement on the importance of immunization in countries like Iraq (95%), Liberia (93%), and Senegal (92%).
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“Our findings suggest that people do not necessarily underestimate the importance of vaccinating their children, even if they have concerns about the safety of the vaccine,” said Dr. Clarissa Simas, co-lead author of the study.
While these results may be encouraging, they were identified before the onset of COVID-19. Therefore, the researchers emphasized the need to identify negative trends early so that they can be countered in time and ensure that everyone can benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine when they are ready.
According to Simas, the medical community should seek to promote a climate of trust around the issue.
A new global study has already been launched to help identify potential barriers that may arise in the effort to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19.
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“Our monitoring also helps us understand which countries and social groups may be reluctant to receive a COVID-19 vaccine,” added de Figueiredo. “We are now in the process of collecting data for many countries around the world to understand confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine.”
“In the UK, we are interviewing over 15,000 people to map these attitudes towards vaccines at the sub-national level to identify local barriers to adoption,” he added.
In the context of COVID-19, myths and misconceptions abound online, to the extent that the WHO has referred to the situation as an “infodemic.”
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