Much of the confusion caused by undermining the safety and efficacy of vaccines is motivated. As a matter of fact, vaccines have significantly reduced the impact of deadly diseases. This message must be spread in a way that reduces resistance to vaccination among the people
Over the past few years, India has taken great strides to address deaths among children under five years of age due to vaccine-preventable diseases like Polio, Pneumonia, Diarrhoea, Measles, Rubella and Japanese Encephalitis.
The introduction of vaccines have had their share of appreciation and brickbats. It is important to understand that when science has largely established the efficacy of vaccines, rumours can have a
detrimental effect on public health programmes, forcing Governments to divert resources to rectify the damage.
A recent example of such vaccine is the Measles-Rubella (MR) campaign, one of the biggest campaign under the ‘Universal Immunisation Programme’ undertaken by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Prior to the announcement of this campaign, critical reports started pouring in from Bengaluru through local media in January 2017.
Reports highlighted concerns related to the safety and efficacy of MR vaccine raised by parents and schools on closed groups on Facebook. On January 11, 2017, a leding national daily filed a story titled, ‘Parents still worried about MR vaccine, even as health officials allay fears’, which mentioned that several parents in Bengaluru had started an online petition on groups, like ‘vaccines: Your right to question’ and ‘Bangalore schools’, questioning the rationale behind making the MR vaccine mandatory.
The situation further worsened when unknown sources started circulating anti-vaccine images and messages on social media, primarily on WhatsApp and Facebook, amplifying the overall crisis.
Whenever such myths surrounding vaccinations start circulating through different channels, they prompt some parents to withhold immunisation from their children, and often lead to a marked increase in vaccine preventable disease, as well as public expenditure on research and public information campaigns aimed at rectifying the situation.
Today, India has an efficient monitoring and surveillance system to closely track events following immunisation. In order to assure the highest safety of the immunisation programme, authorities regularly collect reports of suspected adverse events following immunisation from across the country and systematically assess their clinical importance.
Experts are of the opinion that vaccines for both children and adults have mostly demonstrated the benefits which are always higher than the risks when it comes to the benefits of vaccines versus the problems that they cause.
The fact remains that post vaccination, children do develop minor complaints like fever, local swelling, and pain. But this should not infuse fear amongst parents against vaccination. The message is loud and clear: That vaccination is safe and an effective way to save children.
In fact, vaccines are like health insurance for our children. Researchers have been talking about how to debunk myths against vaccines and vaccination for many years and have found a scientific approach to do the same.
The most common way to counter these myths and reduce its influence on the beneficiaries is by packing in more information about vaccination and vaccines into people’s consciousness. Experience has shown that public misperceptions are due to lack of knowledge or awareness about vaccines and its benefits.
But information has to be delivered in a socio-culturally acceptable manner to avoid confusion among the target audience.
Misinformation is not easy to remove and efforts to remove it should be done in an easy, understandable and succinct manner to prevent any possibility of strengthening the myth in people’s mind — commonly known as the ‘Backfire Effect’. It is important to understand the worldview and sense of cultural identity of the beneficiaries.
Messages have to be crafted in ways that can reduce the usual psychological resistance in people. The components for effectively debunking the myths around vaccination will be to work on the core facts around vaccination in India —a refutation should emphasise the facts, not the myth.
These facts have to be made easily accessible to the beneficiaries/ parents/guardians. One should always have an alternative explanation of a myth in order to fill in the gaps in information.
Harping on the benefits of vaccination in different forms of media like television/Radio/Web can also help debunk the myths.
It is imperative to ingrain the benefits into the beneficiaries and build their trust on vaccines. While doing this, one should stick to key facts to avoid an overkill backfire effect. Graphical or animatic representation of core fact also helps.
Deflating any myth against vaccination a visual graphical/animatic representation can be an effective way to influence the audience behaviour. There is enough evidence of vaccines saving lives of millions of children from the fatal diseases.
The success of vaccines and immunisation can be measured through the recent success of Mission Indradhanush which successfully vaccinated 3.14 crore 2 children and 80.64 lakhs pregnant women across the country. Immunisation in true sense has to become a people’s movement.
(The writer is Executive Director, International Clinical Epidemiology Network, India)