Vaccine hesitancy has resulted in multiple vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. Research on vaccine hesitancy in South Africa is limited. But growing evidence suggests that it’s becoming a problem.
When a pandemic hits, questions that immediately arise include what impact there will be on public health, the economy and other aspects of society. Another set of questions involves response priorities…
From designing vaccine supply chains to improving PPE to rebuilding trust, systematically bringing engineering knowhow to public health problems could make a huge difference.
If South Africa is serious about being able to supply anti-pandemic vaccines in future, it needs to rethink the scale of financial, technical and strategic investment into vaccine production.
COVID-19 restrictions created life-threatening challenges to female sex workers as they weren’t able to access their medication, support or their clients.
The health and wellbeing effects will go beyond the direct impact of war-related fatalities, and are likely to last for years after peace is fully restored.
Critics of the South African government argue that it has done too little too late to secure vaccines, and that it doesn’t have a proper plan in place for rollout.
It’s unlikely South Africa will have a substantial number of vaccines until the second half of this year. Most of the vaccines produced in Europe or America have been bought by other countries.
Local and national governments in west and central African countries must prioritise investment in providing access to HIV testing for all pregnant women.
States and hospitals are starting to declare ‘crisis standards of care’ as the pandemic floods their ERs. The orders have consequences – both good and bad, as a medical ethicist explains.
So far, the only COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use need to be kept frozen. But there are many places in the world that can’t support a cold supply chain.
Public health recommendations have always been a hard sell. Resistance to new behaviors – like the mask-wearing and social distancing advised during the COVID-19 pandemic – is part of human nature.
Bennett Doughty, Binghamton University, State University of New York y Pamela Stewart Fahs, Binghamton University, State University of New York
The vaccines’ cold storage requirements and shipment rules put small, rural communities at a disadvantage, but that’s only part of a long-running challenge.
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand
Professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town