The World Health Organisation (WHO) Consultant, Dr. Abdullahi Bashir of the Modibbo Adama University, has said that people’s attitudes and perception fuel rejection of COVID-19 vaccine.
According to him, to reduce the rejection of AstraZeneca vaccine; recovery, response, prevention and mitigation of COVID-19 be adopted to save people’s lives.
Bashir raised the alarm Monday at a two-day WHO media workshop for Northeast journalists in Yola, Adamawa state.
He said the Northeast environment is impacted by security challenges and further hit by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in March, 2020.
“The deadly virus spread to the Northeast region last April, 2020,” he said, noting that problems of hesitancy and rejection of vaccines continued to persist since the outbreak of COVID-19.
While lamenting hesitant and rejection of vaccines, he said: “The attitudes are categorized into the expectant, hesitant and anti-vaxxer,” explaining that hesitant are heterogeneous people that have more questions that require answers to COVID-19 and AstraZeneca vaccine.
He described the anti-vaxxer, as a small but vocal group of people that actively advocates against vaccination and rejects the science of vaccines.
While the hesitant are being influenced by “complacency, convenience and confidence” before accepting the vaccine.
