RESUMO
In this article, we present and empirically illustrate two concepts about vaccines and the way they are perceived by the Argentinean population and the easiness in accessing vaccination in developing countries. First, we focus on the perceptions of people about vaccines in general and develop a confidence index, and second, we analyze barriers to vaccination, measuring the burden citizens have when they intend to receive immunization (or as caretakers, trying to comply with the vaccination calendar of children and adolescents): for this second concept, we develop an access index. The data comes from representative annual surveys from Argentina from 2019 until 2022 (each one with approximately 7000 responders), which allows us to describe trends and check for changes in the confidence in vaccines and barriers towards vaccination. We find high confidence in vaccines in Argentina, although there is a "structural break" in the confidence for all years after 2020. Because we changed the questionnaire and methodology regarding the access to vaccines index in 2022, the discussion focuses on the cross-section of 2022, observing that barriers to vaccination tend to affect less educated caretakers.