Malaysian Newspapers’ Coverage of Anti-vaxxers: Implication on Vaccine Intakes

@#Introduction: The World Health Organization (WHO) named anti-vaxxers as one of the top ten public health hazards in 2019. Anti-vaxxers are a health danger since they are mostly responsible for the re-emergence of deadly contagious diseases such as measles, which has increased in recent years. The media such as newspapers, are responsible for disseminating messages and public knowledge about health issues, particularly health hazards. To particularly combat anti-vaccine views online, newspaper must provide critical information, such as scientific and verifiable facts. Newspapers need to also take a clear stand against anti-vaccine sentiments. Method: A quantitative content analysis was conducted on four newspapers (Harian Metro, Berita Harian, New Straits Times, and The Star) over a three-year period beginning 1 January 2019 and ending 30 September 2021. The 43-month period offered adequate data for analysing reporting trends. Result: The findings suggested that newspapers do significantly report about the antivaxxers with 247 news were focused on them. Conclusion: However, the newspapers tend to only publish generic information about the antivaxxers and rarely make compelling arguments against them.

Anti-vaccination movements in the world and in Brazil

ABSTRACT Over the years, vaccinations have provided significant advances in public health, because they substantially reduce the morbimortality of vaccine-preventable diseases. Nevertheless, many people are still hesitant to be vaccinated. Brazil is a region of many anti-vaccine movements, and several outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as yellow fever and measles, have occurred in the country during the last few years. To avoid new outbreaks, immunization coverage must be high; however, this is a great challenge to achieve due to the countless anti-vaccine movements. The World Health Organization has suggested new actions for the next decade via the Immunization Agenda 2030 to control, reduce, or eradicate vaccine-preventable diseases. Nonetheless, the vaccination coverage has decreased recently. To resolve the anti-vaccine issue, it is necessary to propose a long-term approach that involves innovative education programs on immunization and critical thinking, using different communication channels, including social media. Cooperation among biology and health scientists, ethicists, human scientists, policymakers, journalists, and civil society is essential for an in-depth understanding of the social action of vaccine refusal and planning effective education measures to increase the vaccine coverage.