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Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal: History, Causes, Mitigation Strategies

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Integrated Science of Global Epidemics

Part of the book series: Integrated Science ((IS,volume 14))

Summary

Vaccine hesitancy, referred to as the refusal or delayed uptake of vaccinations despite their availability, is one of the ten biggest current threats to global health as declared by the World Health Organization. Mistrust and outright hostility towards immunization are not recent phenomena: through the course of history, the development of new vaccinations has proceeded side-by-side with the spread of movements opposing them. The first part of this chapter recounts the salient points of the history of immunization. It provides insight into the commonalities and differences between anti-vaccination movements arising in different times and places. The historical outline is followed by an evaluation of the socioeconomic, psychological, cultural, and political factors that determine vaccine hesitancy. The final section draws on the previous two to discuss evidence-based strategies and interventions to mitigate the extent and impact of vaccine hesitancy and refusal.

Graphical Abstract/Art Performance

A graphical abstract classifies and explains vaccine hesitancy. It has 2 parts, full refusal, and full acceptance.

The vaccine hesitancy spectrum.

The code of this chapter is 01100101 01110011 01110101 01100110 01101100 01010010 01100001.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “I feel all sleepy,” she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

[…] On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

Roald Dahl, 1986

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Alessandro Siani

  2. University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, King Henry 1st Street, PO1 2DY, Portsmouth, UK

    Alessandro Siani

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  1. Alessandro Siani
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Correspondence to Alessandro Siani .

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  1. Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), Stockholm, Sweden

    Nima Rezaei

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Siani, A. (2023). Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal: History, Causes, Mitigation Strategies. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Integrated Science of Global Epidemics. Integrated Science, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17778-1_23

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