There is a history of drugs companies running trials in poorer countries (not just Africa but often there) with sometimes less than acceptable ethics around consent, design, safety, explanations, compensation (in the west most trial participants in early phase testing are paid - remember those people in Northwick Park a few years ago who had an horrendous reaction in a phase one trial?). These things happened through the collusion of local doctors and politicians, but that of course is no excuse. I think (but can’t guarantee) that this has now ended, certainly for all the big companies, but a few decades ago, definitely a thing. The memory runs deep, and is understandable.
On the telly I’ve heard even black junior doctors say they are being suspicious of a vaccine invented so quickly, and wary because ‘we never get anything first - why this? Another experiment?’
In Muslim communities there is a lot of misinformation about jabs making people sterile, and not just for the virus, in Pakistan and elsewhere there are big issues about polio, to the extent that it’s one of the few places where the disease still exists. They think that it’s a plot by the west to wipe out Islam.
Of course everything is magnified by social media, especially as many people seem more prepared to believe something they read there than what they see on telly or in the papers.
The ‘anti vaxxers’ are a different thing altogether, sundry conspiracy theorists, nutters and paranoiacs who not only want to exercise their own ‘right’ not to be vaccinated (though happy to take the proxy protection given by the majority of the population doing the sensible thing) but also to try to bully, scare and intimidate others into following their example. I know you are supposed to be patient and engage with people like this because they are driven by fear with no reason, but frankly I can’t be arsed. The nasty, vindictive side of my character (about 83%) wants us to have vaccination passports just to wind these twats up.
The positive is that most people of any background see the sense of getting jabbed.
