Mapping global trends in vaccine confidence and investigating barriers to vaccine uptake: a large-scale retrospective temporal modelling study
This analysis estimated and mapped vaccine confidence for 149 countries from 2015-2019. Although confidence remains low across Europe, there are signs that it is increasing, with recent increases in the percentage of respondents agreeing that vaccines are safe detected in the UK.
Source:
The Lancet
SPS commentary:
A related Comment notes that vaccine perceptions and disease outbreaks are often localised issues, and that it is therefore vital to have serial, cross-sectional surveys to identify issues within communities, countries and regions. It also discusses how the perceived safety of vaccination is fundamentally linked to vaccine confidence, and how rapid and rigorous science is needed to determine whether adverse events following immunisation, which are often perceived as being caused by vaccines solely on the basis of the temporal relationship, are causally related to vaccination or simply coincidental.