This week, I saw an article in NPR Goats and Soda (
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/02/17/1081130414/iraq-has-enough-doses-of-covid-vaccine-for-everyone-but-many-iraqis-dont-trust-i) about vaccine hesitancy in Iraq. The article discussed how despite there being enough vaccine doses for everyone, there is a large amount of hesitancy that is impeding vaccination efforts.
In particular, there appears to be a fear of the Pfizer vaccine because it is from the United States. I think this is a good example of how relations and tensions between countries can indirectly impact public health. It reminded me of the polio outbreak in Nigeria in 2003. At the time, polio had been eliminated from Nigeria. However, given that this was soon after 9/11, there were lots of tensions between Christian and Muslim communities globally. This caused some people in Nigeria to say that the polio vaccine contained ingredients that caused infertility and cancer, and that the Americans wanted to deplete the Muslim population. As a result, there was a ban on the vaccine, which resulted in the re-emergence of polio in the country, which ended up spreading into other nearby countries.
This parallel shows, in my opinion, how important relationships between countries are. Health should technically not be political, but it inevitably does become tied to governments and religions. As a result, it is crucial to ensure that people feel like they can trust the people who are encouraging them to be vaccinated. I don’t have a good answer for how exactly to ensure this, but I do think that country leaders should keep in mind how much public health can be affected by inter-country tensions.
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