Factors influencing COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy among pharmacy students in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: In the wake of COVID-19 prevention, a growing attention has been devoted to administering vaccines among various sub-group populations including community health care providers. As a community health worker pharmacists and pharmacy students played a crucial role in patient-centered services for managing COVID-19. Examining pharmacy students’ vaccine acceptance intent has great potential in understanding how pharmacists’ perception impacts community people. This study investigated COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among pharmacy students in Bangladesh and identified the potential factors associated with their vaccine acceptance and hesitancy. Methods: An anonymous questionnaire was deployed online using Google forms in English and conveniently sent to 1190 pharmacy students at different universities between 15th October 2021 and 15th December 2021. The convenience sampling consisted of 1034 student pharmacists (response rate 86.9%) who participated in this study. Binary logistic regressions and Chi-squared test were used for rationalizing the study objectives. Results: The pooled COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rate was 908 (87.8%; 95% CI 85.8─87.8) among student pharmacists while 29.6% (95% CI 25.4─33.9) admitted the willingness to pay (WTP) for a COVID-19 vaccine. Out of 12 vital predictive factors, “safety,” “efficacy,” and “trust” had the strongest significant and positive association with vaccine acceptance (p=0.000). The logistic analysis also revealed that “communication” and “information sufficiency” had a significant positive association with vaccine acceptance (p=0.035 and 0.038, respectively) among student pharmacists. Although the odds of accepting the COVID-19 vaccine were found to be 1.1; an insignificant association between gender and vaccine acceptance was observed in the Chi-squared test. Conclusions: The prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine apprehension will reduce if vaccine-related information becomes more publicly available. Ensuring easy access to scientific information with evidence-based and tailored communication would enhance vaccine acceptance among pharmacy students. Implementation of multidisciplinary educational intervention would support the health care students to achieve adequate knowledge on vaccination consequences.

Potential factors influencing COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy among university students in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional comparative study

“…Health communication has been recognized as one of the key predictors of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among Bangladeshi people [41,42]. Poor trust and confidence in the country's health system lead to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among adults in Bangladesh [19].…”

“…The most critical predictor for converting vaccines to vaccinations and ensuring mass immunisation against COVID-19 in rural Bangladesh is health communication [ 25 ]. Health communication has been recognised as one of the key predictors of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among Bangladeshi people [ 41 , 42 ]. Poor trust and confidence in the country's health system lead to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among adults in Bangladesh [ 19 ].…”

Sociopsychological determinants of COVID‐19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy among the students' of higher secondary schools in rural Bangladesh: A cross‐sectional study

“…| 571 from recent relevant reviews (Al-Jayyousi et al, 2021;Fajar et al, 2022;Lin et al, 2020;Nehal et al, 2021;Patwary et al, 2022;Roy et al, 2022aRoy et al, , 2022b. Accordingly, key items of instrument were adopted from a theoretical analysis of the recent studies on the topics (Al-Mulla et al, 2021;Bai et al, 2021;Barello et al, 2020;Grech & Gauci, 2020;Jain et al, 2021;Kanyike et al, 2021;Manning et al, 2021;Sallam et al, 2021;Tavolacci et al, 2021).…”

“…The most prevailing factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine distrust led to grow hesitance among the students followed the same pattern as they marked in frequencies among other subgroups. The global scientific community deduced that, the prevalence of student's COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was associated with multiple sociopsychological and vaccine related factors (Roy et al, 2022a(Roy et al, , 2022bUmucu et al, 2022). Impressively, the clinical report demonstrated the adequate safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines for boosting school-going youth adults (ClinicalTrials.gov., 2022;Han et al, 2021).…”

Multi-dimensional potential factors influencing COVID-19 vaccine booster acceptance and hesitancy among university academic community in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional comparative study

“…Recent studies have documented the substantial influence of teachers on student attitudes and behavior [29] and dynamic vaccine behaviors existing in a college setting [30]. Several observational studies conducted in Bangladesh to date have focused on COVID-19 vaccination events among diverse sub-group populations [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], including university students [39][40][41][42][43]. However; public readiness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine booster dose has rarely been studied in Bangladesh.…”