Senior Program Manager of Immunization – Ministry of Health
There are major risks of immunisation facing the population such as the fear of side effects, misinformation around vaccines, inadequate access to healthcare, inconvenient and limited clinical access, using complex terms and languages, lack of information in local languages and loss of wage on the day of immunisation.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of adequate awareness and community engagement activities to tackle misinformation of vaccines, awareness of vaccine benefits, and information on schedule and doses of vaccines. Inadequate access to healthcare and vaccine administration fees also presents major barriers to immunisation.
While information is available around the risks, there needs to be a clear timely dissemination of the information to the communities. The data and information need to be presented in simple forms and translated into the local languages. The dissemination of information requires clear, relevant and accurate facts that are easy to find and understand. Communities needs to be engaged with and listened to identify and analyse perceptions, content and information gaps and misinformation. Additionally, to help with the awareness, local leaders need to be involved to engage and mobilise communities about the risks.