Failures to response in early stage blamed for widespread fear of vaccination

National
Clement Malau

FAILURES in the messaging and strategies of PNG’s Coronavirus (Covid-19) response in the early stages of the pandemic last year have been blamed for the widespread fear of vaccination, says a newspaper report.
A recent article in The Guardian titled “The fear of this vaccine is real: how PNG’s Covid-19 strategy went so wrong” delved into how Government authorities reacted so slowly to the pandemic when it hit in March last year.
It says PNG has a “disastrously low vaccination rate”, with less than 4 per cent of the adult population fully vaccinated despite the availability of jabs in all provinces.
“The fear of this vaccine is real,” said Dr Fiona Hukula, a Port Moresby-based anthropologist with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
In Madang, Divine Word University president, anthropologist and Catholic priest Dr Philip Gibbs had countless conversations with staff and students trying to persuade them to get jabbed.
“It’s an emotional issue, not a rational issue,” he said.
“I got the impression that students here are more afraid of the vaccine than they are of catching the virus.” The newspaper interviewed former health secretary Dr Clement Malau, who like others, tried his best to counter the “confusion and distrust (of the vaccine) from the earliest days” sown in the people.
He said authorities should have used a more effective approach to convince people about getting the vaccine early.
While Malau encourages the Covid-19 vaccination, and posed for cameras in Port Moresby when he got his first jab in May, he argued that jabs alone would not cut it in PNG.
“If we do not understand our own setting, we will be bulldozed down the track of just vaccine alone.”
Obstetrician Prof Glen Mola said even with mounting casualties, “with all the vaccine phobia and people who have provoked this fear of vaccination, it’s getting worse”.