Proceedings of The 7th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Social reactions to the Covid-19 vaccination in Greater Abidjan area
KANGAH Orphée Michelle Alerte, AHI Noël, DOUKOURE Daouda, DOUDOU Dimi Théodore, YAVO William
ABSTRACT:
Safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 are proposed as a way to end the pandemic. However, the risk of vaccine hesitancy in sub-Saharan Africa is real with COVID-19 vaccines. A survey conducted in 2021 made it possible to analyse perceptions, attitudes and practices regarding COVID-19 vaccination in Greater Abidjan area, the epicentre of the epidemic in Côte d’Ivoire. A randomly selected sample of 1050 individuals responded to a questionnaire and another sample of 20 purposively selected individuals participated in individual interviews. Univariate and multivariate analyses were carried out for the quantitative data and a thematic content analysis for the qualitative data.
The results showed that the majority of respondents (82.28%) have knowledge of the existence and role of COVID-19 vaccines. However, perceptions are unfavourable for adherence to vaccination : only 34.04% of respondents believed in the efficacy of vaccines, 23.13% had doubts about their safety and 11% had a habitual aversion to vaccines. These perceptions impacted on attitudes and behaviour towards COVID-19 vaccination as 96% of respondents were not yet vaccinated and of these, 70% were not willing to be vaccinated. The fundamental reason given for the reluctance to vaccinate is the bad press given to COVID-19 vaccines. In view of the results, targeted and concerted community actions are solutions for better adoption of vaccination.
keywords: Covid-19, perceptions, hesitancy, vaccination, Côte d’Ivoire.