Vaccine hesitancy and trust in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lack of trust is a primary reason behind the global rise in vaccine hesitancy. Existing research on the trust-vaccine hesitancy nexus has almost exclusively focused on COVID-19 with the vast majority of studies examining industrialized countries. In this study, we investigated the influence of trust in different policy-relevant actors (government, science, media, pharmaceutical companies, society) on vaccine hesitancy for recently available vaccines related to polio and HPV which we benchmark against a COVID-19 vaccine.

Who shares fake news on social media? Evidence from vaccines and infertility claims in sub-Saharan Africa.

The widespread dissemination of misinformation on social media is a serious threat to global health. To a large extent, it is still unclear who actually shares health-related misinformation deliberately and accidentally. We conducted a large-scale online survey among 5,307 Facebook users in six sub-Saharan African countries, in which we collected information on sharing of fake news and truth discernment.