THE UK-HOSTED GLOBAL VACCINE CONFIDENCE SUMMIT TACKLED MISINFORMATION ABOUT VACCINES.
Representatives from the Caribbean were invited to join the Global Vaccine Confidence Summit, which convened world leading experts to commit to greater international collaboration to build vaccine confidence globally.
As part of its G7 Presidency, the UK Government convened the Summit, a first-of-its-kind event, which featured Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General.
During the Summit, world leading experts at the forefront of efforts to build vaccine confidence and tackle misinformation about vaccines offered their perspectives on the critical global actions that governments and partners from across sectors can take to address the issue.
It was acknowledged that increased levels of vaccine confidence, accessibility and availability are needed globally in order to end the pandemic. One of the biggest threats to confidence in vaccines is misinformation, which can damage public perceptions of vaccine safety and efficacy.
In his keynote speech, Dr Tedros showed his support stating: “A key driver of vaccination is public trust. Trust must be earned. To succeed in vaccinating the whole world, governments will have to deploy a range of strategies and tailor them to each country.”
Wendy Morton MP, the UK’s Minister for the Americas, expressed the UK and its G7 partners’ on-going commitment to support efforts to ensure vaccines are accessible, available and trusted globally. She said: “Vaccines are a vital tool in protecting everyone against Covid-19. As vaccines are rolled out, we face a once-in-a-generation global challenge of making sure people have trust in them.
“Today’s Summit has shown us that in order to boost vaccine confidence, we need to build on international partnerships; we need to make the most out of technology to understand our audiences, and we need to share our capabilities so that every country has the right tools in place to make information about vaccines easily accessible for all.
“That’s why today the UK Government and Google Cloud have announced a collaborative partnership to develop new digital solutions to drive vaccine confidence and address harmful vaccine misinformation around the world. As part of our G7 presidency, global vaccine confidence and global equitable access to vaccines are two critical components in getting us back on track.”
At the Summit, the UK Government announced ambitions for its G7 vaccine confidence activity, launching an innovative digital insight platform to provide global and local insight, as well as trends on vaccine confidence and the harmful misinformation that is seeking to undermine it. Also announced was a coalition of some of the world’s best academic organisations to understand ‘infodemics’ and promote healthy information ecosystems.
The Global Vaccine Confidence Summit forms part of the UK’s wider work as G7 President this year to bring an end to the pandemic, with vaccine uptake, access and confidence a key component.
