Perception and Awareness Towards Malaria Vaccine Policy Implementation in Nigeria by Health Policy Actors

Abstract

Background of study: The study aimed to assess perception and awareness of health policy actors on malaria vaccine policy implementation in Nigeria. A descriptive study was conducted to assess opinions and perception of policy actors on implementation of a vaccine program against malaria in Nigeria. Descriptive statistics were carried out to study the characteristics of the population and the univariate analysis of the responses to the questions raised to the participants. Multinomial logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the association between demographic characteristics and the responses. Results: The study revealed that the malaria vaccine awareness was poor with only 48.9% of the policy actors who have previous knowledge of malaria vaccine. Majority of participants (67.8%) declared that they are aware of the importance of vaccine policy in the efforts on tackling the diseases transmission. The more the year of work experience of the participants increases, the odds of being more likely to be aware of the malaria vaccine increases [OR 2.491 (1.183–5.250), p-value < 0.05]. Conclusion: It is recommended that policy makers develop methods of educating populations and increase the awareness on the acceptability of the vaccine and ensure that an affordable malaria vaccine program is implemented in the population.

Willingness and Perceptions of Malaria Vaccines among Caregivers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

“…Low vaccine awareness was recorded in Southwest Ethiopia (18%) [37]. In contrast, moderate to high awareness of the malaria vaccine was recorded in other studies among healthcare workers (48.9%) [38,39], the community (48%) [39] and caregivers of children under ve years of age (40%) [38,39] in Nigeria. The low awareness of the malaria vaccine among the surveyed caregivers in malaria-endemic areas is alarming, even more so among health actors and communities at large, particularly now that the vaccine has been launched and is being implemented in other malaria-endemic countries, including Malawi, Kenya and Ghana, since 2021 [5,40].…”

Policy uptake and implementation of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine in sub-Saharan African countries: status 2 years following the WHO recommendation

“…Prior to the WHO recommendation, studies conducted on the anticipated challenges to effective implementation of the vaccine identified inadequate community engagement, fear of vaccine side effects, inefficient delivery of vaccination services to children, cost of vaccine introduction and uptake of the four-dose schedule as possible stumbling blocks 42–44. Various approaches have been proposed for the successful implementation of the vaccine, such as using dynamic communication models and trusted sources for delivering vaccine-related health information to the communities, community engagement at both national and district levels and implementation of the new vaccine alongside the existing health services already delivered 42 43 45–51…”