Political commentator claims vaccines are being used to kill Africans

Polio Pulse

Polio Pulse provides social listening insights to support GPEI’s polio interventions on disinformation, crisis communication, and strategic communication. Data is monitored from polio-endemic and outbreak countries and geographies classified by GPEI, covering 12 major languages spoken in these regions. The platform is managed by the UNICEF Digital Community Engagement (DCE) team.

Analysis

A political commentator who ran for president during the 2021 Ugandan election claimed in a recent social media post that “so-called vaccines” are being thrown at Africans after they “survived the COVID shots,” listing malaria, mpox, and HIV vaccines. Additionally, the post accuses Bill Gates of being a eugenicist who wants to reduce the global population to one billion. The post received nearly 200 replies, with some questioning how the polio vaccine was developed and claiming that polio is made in a lab. Many responses expressed a general distrust of vaccines, claiming they are “poison” and unnecessary.

Recommendations

Distrust of vaccines and global immunization efforts may lead to hesitancy. Prebunking messaging may explain the importance of vaccination to combat the spread of deadly and debilitating and preventable diseases like mpox, malaria, and polio and that there is no vaccine against HIV. Debunking messaging may emphasize that polio is a real disease caused by poliovirus and is not man made. Explaining that the polio vaccine is extremely safe and rigorously tested and that local ministries of health run polio vaccination programs without Western interference is recommended.