PARIS, Sept 11, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Public trust in vaccine safety is slowly
growing in Europe even as it dips in parts of Asia and Africa, researchers
said Friday, calling for more investment in health information campaigns for
the forthcoming Covid-19 vaccine.
The largest ever global survey of vaccine confidence, published in the
Lancet medical journal, shows clear links between political instability and
misinformation and the levels of trust in the safety of medicines.
The World Health Organization lists vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10
global health threats, and dipping levels of immunisation coverage have seen
outbreaks of preventable diseases such as polio and measles in recent years.
The survey of nearly 300,000 respondents shows trust in vaccine safety
increasing — with some exceptions — across Europe.
In France, where confidence in vaccines has been consistently low for
decades, it shows an increase from 22 percent to 30 percent of people
strongly agreeing they are safe.
In Britain, confidence in vaccine safety rose from 47 percent in May 2018
to 52 percent in November 2019.
Poland and Serbia however saw significant declines in public vaccine
confidence.
Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan saw
“substantial” increases in the number of people strongly disagreeing that
vaccines are safe between 2015 and 2019.
In Azerbaijan, public mistrust surged from 2 percent to 17 percent in that
timeframe.
Authors of the research attributed this “worrying trend” in part to
political instability and religious extremism.
Heidi Larson from the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who
led the research, said online misinformation was also a significant problem.
“When there is a large drop in vaccination coverage, it is often because
there’s an unproven vaccine safety scare seeding doubt and distrust,” she
said.
Larson said that public mistrust in politicians in general also likely
played a role.
As the world races to find a vaccine to potentially end the Covid-19
pandemic, the researchers warned that governments need to ramp up investment
in public information campaigns and as well as distribution infrastructure.
Without this, Daniel Salmon from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health said “there is a risk of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines never reaching their
potential due to a continued inability to quickly and effectively respond to
public vaccine safety concerns, real or otherwise”.