Have a plan in place to tackle Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, WHO advises India

The World Health Organization on Friday advised India to plan for “community engagement and risk communication” in order to overcome “vaccine hesitancy” as the Centre began preparing for a never-done-before exercise to vaccinate crores of individuals against Covid-19.

“A special consideration should be made for overcoming vaccine hesitancy,” the WHO South East Asia region said in a statement to its member countries including India after a two-day meeting in which the Covid-19 vaccination landscape in the region was reviewed.

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Vaccine hesitancy is a concern that remains in the minds of senior government officials entrusted with preparing India’s Covid-19 vaccination strategy.

Such hesitancy or doubts occur in the minds of individuals with limited or inaccurate health information or who have concerns and questions about any given vaccine and its safety before accepting it.

"Please have faith on what science decides and the regulator decides. When our regulator or science institutes decide on a vaccine, please have faith,” Vinod Paul, NITI Ayog member and a former professor at AIIMS, Delhi said at a press conference earlier this week.

"Don’t succumb to contrary news and fake news. Come back to us, we will clarify with the right information for which we are accountable. Fight against the pandemic will be weakened if you believe in such (fake) news.”

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Writing in the journal Lancet on Thursday, an international team of researchers including Gagandeep Kang of Christian Medical College Vellore observed that weaknesses in the implementation of a wide-scale Covid-19 vaccination strategy would reduce the efficacy of the vaccine as reported in clinical trials.

The researchers pointed out that a top–down one-size-fits-all approach was unlikely to resolve the hesitancy issues as seen in the past several times.

“The public is not a homogeneous entity. It is complex, composed of individuals, families, and other groups shaped by contexts, experiences, and desires in a constellation of communities with different patterns of health literacy, values, and expectations.”

The issue of vaccine hesitancy, according to Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, was inherent to any vaccination campaign irrespective of any adverse effect incident. “A detailed guideline is being prepared, which would be shared with the states,” he said.

Meanwhile, India inches towards having one crore Covid-19 positive cases with the addition of more than 29,000 cases in the last 24 hours that took the tally to nearly 98 lakh. The death toll is 142,186 of which 414 was added in the last 24 hours. The number of active cases remains at 3.63 lakh, the lowest in 146 days.