Vaccine hesitancy can’t be boiled down to a single factor: what we learnt in South Africa and Brazil

By Camila C. Matos, Family and Community Physician, Professor, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC)
Charles Shey Wiysonge, Extraordinary Professor, Global Health, Stellenbosch University; South African Medical Research Council
Marcia Thereza Couto, Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo (USP)

Vaccine uptake has been declining in Brazil and South Africa over the last decade. This decline has reversed important gains in protecting children against vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, polio, diphtheria and whooping cough.

Both countries have well-established, universal and free childhood immunisation programmes. In Brazil, coverage has dropped 10-20 percentage points since…

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