AJMC Back in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed vaccine hesitancy—the outright refusal or reluctance to get vaccinated regardless of the availability of vaccines—as a top-10 threat to global health.1 At the time, WHO estimated that vaccinations prevented up to 3 million deaths each year; furthermore, an additional 1.5 million deaths could be prevented if global vaccine awareness, coverage, and efforts were enhanced. The topic of vaccine hesitancy has been studied dating back to the 1960s; however, in the wake of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns and residual anxiety, these research endeavors have more than tripled. A systematic literature review published in Vaccines found that there were 1160 scientific publications concerned with the subject in the pre–COVID-19 era (1968-2021), and this number jumped to a striking 4563 publications post COVID-19 (2021 onwards).2
Fair Use Notice
UNMC Global Center for Health Security staff curate publicly available news and information for educational and informational purposes. Brief excerpts of published articles may be displayed under principles of Fair Use, with credit and links provided to the source publications. All copyrights remain the property of their respective owners.