South Africa: Vaccine Hesitancy? No, Government Failure

analysis

There will be more waves of this virus. Without massively increasing the number of people vaccinated, there will be more hospitalisations and deaths. We need to vaccinate as many vulnerable people as possible now. The lack of uptake in vaccine centres is not due to the expostulations of a handful of radical anti-vaxxers. It is due to a systematic lack of engagement by a government that has lost track of the needs of our population. We need to fix things, fast.

Dr Bridget Farham is the editor of the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ) and Consultant to the Director's Office, Universal Health Care/Communicable and Non-communicable Diseases Cluster, WHO, African Region. She was a population biologist in a previous life (before studying medicine), hence the interest in viral ecology. This article was also published in the SAMJ today.

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