International Medical Corps' Approach to Solving COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we supported vaccination efforts across 17 countries through logistic and technical support, through managing or supporting vaccine campaigns and the vaccination process, and through water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs and biomedical waste management. In the past, the lack of equitable access to vaccines has been a problem in humanitarian and resource-poor settings;however, with such a high global demand for COVID-19 vaccines, delay in access could lead to a vicious cycle of hesitancy, low uptake and emergence of new strains.2 UNDERSTANDING VACCINE HESITANCY Vaccine hesitancy is defined as "a delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite the availability of vaccination services"3 The WHO has recognized it as one of the biggest threats to global health.4 Vaccine hesitancy is contextdependent and can change over time. The first consensus definition of vaccine hesitancy was reached in 2014, when the WHO's SAGE working group on vaccine hesitancy defined it.3 Since then, there has been progress in understanding the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and in addressing them, but operational guidance on mitigating hesitancy at the community level was limited when we started working on COVID-19 vaccination. A LOCALLY RESPONSIVE FRAMEWORK FOR A GLOBAL PROBLEM Keeping in mind the urgency of the issue, the contextual differences inherent to vaccine hesitancy, and the lack of global guidance on the topic, International Medical Corps decided to create a process by which we would have some guiding values and a flexible operational process that adjusts to local conditions.