Commun Med (Lond)
September 2023
Background: Despite improved availability of COVID-19 vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, vaccination campaigns in the region have struggled to pick up pace and trail the rest of the world. Yet, a successful vaccination campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa will be critical to containing COVID-19 globally.
Methods: Here, we present new descriptive evidence on vaccine hesitancy, uptake, last-mile delivery barriers, and potential strategies to reach those who remain unvaccinated.
Background: COVID-19 vaccination efforts are lagging in Sub-Saharan Africa, as just over 20 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is considered important as a prerequisite for widespread vaccine take-up. Here, we study the dynamics of vaccine acceptance, its correlates, and reasons for hesitancy over time, drawing on two years of panel survey data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To estimate the willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine in six sub-Saharan African countries and identify differences in acceptance across countries and population groups.
Design: Cross-country comparable, descriptive study based on a longitudinal survey.
Setting: Six national surveys from countries representing 38% of the sub-Saharan African population (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria and Uganda).
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face survey data collection efforts came to a halt due to lockdowns, limitations on mobility and social distancing requirements. What followed was a surge in phone surveys to fulfill rapidly evolving needs for timely and policy-relevant microdata for understanding the socioeconomic impacts of and responses to the pandemic. Even as the face-to-face survey data collection efforts are resuming in different parts of the world with COVID-19 safety protocols, the rapidly-acquired experience with phone surveys on the part of national statistical offices and survey practitioners in low- and middle-income countries appears to have formed the foundation for phone surveys to be more commonly implemented in the post-pandemic era, in response to other shocks and as complementary efforts to face-to-face surveys.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study was designed to assess patterns of objectively measured physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour in a sample of adults in a rural setting from a low-income Sub-Saharan African country (Malawi). The patterns of PA and sedentary behaviour in Malawi were compared with US data collected and analysed using the same methodology.
Methods: The Malawi PA data were collected as part of a survey experiment on the measurement of agricultural labor conducted under the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study program.