Health officials are confronting vaccine reluctance among African women, especially those of childbearing age
The health outreach workers who drove past Lama Mballow’s village with a megaphone handed out T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “I GOT MY COVID-19 VACCINE!”
By then, the women in Sare Gibel had heard the rumours on social media: The vaccines could make your blood stop or cause you to miscarry. Women who took it wouldn’t get pregnant again.
Lama Mballow and her sister-in-law, Fatoumata Mballow, never made the 3.4-mile trip (5.5 kilometres) to town for their vaccines, but the family kept the free shirt. Its lettering is now well-worn, but the women’s resolve has not softened. They share many meal preparation duties, child care, and their outlook on the vaccine.
“I definitely need a lot of children,” said Lama Mballow, 24, who has a 4-year-old son, another child on the way and no plans to get vaccinated. And Fatoumata Mballow, 29, struggling to get pregnant for the third time in a village where some women have as many as 10 children, quietly insists: “I don’t want to make it worse and destroy my womb.”
As health officials in Gambia and across Africa urge women to be vaccinated, they’ve confronted unwillingness among those of childbearing age. Many women worry that current or future pregnancies will be threatened and, in Africa, the success of a woman’s marriage often depends on the number of children she bears. Other women say they’re simply more afraid of the vaccine than the virus: As breadwinners, they can’t miss a day of work if side effects such as fatigue and fever briefly sideline them.
Their fears are hardly exceptional, with rumours proliferating across Africa, where fewer than 4% of the population is immunized. Although data on the gender breakdown of vaccine distribution are lacking globally, experts see a growing number of women in Africa’s poorest countries consistently missing out on vaccines. Officials who already bemoan the inequity of vaccine distribution between rich and poor nations now fear that the stark gender disparity means African women are the least vaccinated population in the world.
This story is part of a year-long series on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries.
“We do see, unfortunately, that even as COVID vaccines arrive in Africa after a long delay, women are being left behind,” said Dr. Abdahalah Ziraba, an epidemiologist at the African Population and Health Research Center.
Source: The Associated Press
