With the support of the European Union, we raise awareness with the aim of deconstructing the myths about vaccines against Covid-19
We learnt from the communities that they had been misinformed and told that pregnant and lactating women cannot get vaccinated. This, we believe, has contributed to the gap in vaccination between men and women. Misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines has kept many women away from getting vaccinated. To address this, we had focus group discussions for men and for women, aged 18-60 years and above, where we collaborated with community leaders, men, women and youth in 6 local government areas in Borno State (Bama, Dikwa, Gajigana, Monguno, Maiduguri and Ngala) to learn from them their preferred way to receive information about Covid-19.
We discovered that in all the communities visited, the main source of information about the pandemic were through radio programmes, town criers, community leaders and sensitization programmes carried out by NGOs. We also learned from the assessment that not only did women have limited access to information than men (who also had easier access to the internet), “the kind of information accessible to the educated, including those living in rural and urban areas”, was different. Zainab is an internally displaced person living in one of the camps. She is pregnant and had not been vaccinated prior to the beginning of the group discussions. She told us:“When I learnt about the advantages of the vaccine after hearing what my fellow women said about it, I got vaccinated. I am proud to show off my vaccination card”, Zainab tells us.
Vaccination awareness campaigns
With the support of the European Union, we are distributing solar powered radios, conducting door to door awareness and motorized campaigns to demystify all myths related to Covid-19 vaccines and promote vaccine acceptance. The radios contain messages about the pandemic, myths and facts about Covid-19 and personal hygiene, in Hausa, Kanuri and English languages.
Over the last weeks of 2021, in North-east Nigeria, there was a notable increase in positive cases. According to what was reported by the Ministry of Health, at the end of the week of January 30, 2022, 1,630 cases were confirmed in the State of Borno while, throughout the country, over 253,340. Our intervention aims to increase the number of women who undergo vaccination as much as possible.