Examining one of the reasons children are missed during vaccination.
Deeply entrenched religious and traditional beliefs as well as a strong distrust of government health services undermine polio eradication efforts, particularly in Katanga
“We don’t trust the vaccine; we have faith in God who heals us. We trust in God,” says Maman Adèle in Katanga. A profound belief in divine intervention against polio, among many other religious and cultural beliefs, contributes to DR Congo’s high proportion of children who are unvaccinated due to parents’ refusal of the oral polio vaccine. Between 8-12% of children under-5 years old are left unvaccinated against the poliovirus after each of DR Congo’s polio vaccination campaigns, occurring almost monthly.
There could be many reasons for unimmunized children in DR Congo – vaccination teams may not have arrived at their designated households – either due to poor performance or logistical constraints; when teams do arrive, parents may refuse the vaccine; or they may inform front-line workers that children are not at home when they arrive. Among children that are missed each month, up to 40% are missed due to their parents’ refusal to accept the oral polio vaccine.
With 70 million people spanning a vast territory the size of Western Europe, a wide array of geographic, security and political challenges make DR Congo a particularly challenging context for polio eradication. A deeply entrenched social and cultural system that rejects ‘western medicine’ compounds the eradication effort in some of the highest risk areas.
To better understand the social norms underlying vaccine refusal, UNICEF has led a study to investigate the social reasons that explain why children continue to be missed during immunization campaigns.
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