How to deal with vaccine hesitancy?

Abstract

Based on the concerns about vaccine hesitancy and its impact on vaccine uptake rates and the performance of national immunization programmes, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy [1], carried out a review, and proposed a set of recommendations directed to the public health community, to WHO and its partners, and to the World Health Organization (WHO) member states. The final recommendations issued by SAGE in October 2014 fall into three categories: (1) those focused on the need to increase the understanding of vaccine hesitancy, its determinants and the rapidly changing challenges it entails; (2) those focused on dealing with the structures and organizational capacity to decrease hesitancy and increase acceptance of vaccines at the global, national and local levels; (3) and those focused on the sharing of lessons learnt and effective practices from various countries and settings as well as the development, validation and implementation of new tools to address hesitancy.

Keywords: Recommendations; SAGE; Vaccine acceptance; Vaccine hesitancy; Vaccine refusal; WHO.