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World Immunisation Week

World Immunisation Week is an awareness campaign led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and celebrated annually in the last week of the April. It aims to drive collective global action to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease.

World Immunisation Week 2024

For World Immunisation Week 2024, we are exploring vaccine hesitancy: What are its causes? Why is it growing? And how can ordinary people get involved with encouraging uptake?

What is vaccine hesitancy?

Vaccine hesitancy describes uncertainty when making decisions about vaccines, either on a personal level or by segments of the population. Vaccine hesitant people may be concerned about the jabs for COVID-19, flu, HPV, mRNA vaccines or the concept of immunisation as a whole.

Our research speaking to immunistion professionals tells us that growing vaccine hestiancy has led to increased difficulty in having coversations about vaccinations compared to two years ago. Reasons for this difficulty include the proliferation of fake news, conspiracy theories and a general confusion about how vaccines work.

But we also know that talking more about vaccines and having those conversations outside of just clinical settings is a great way to bridge the divide – so let's get talking!

 

World Immunisation Week resources