While many studies over the past several years have examined people's access to and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, few studies in sub-Saharan Africa have looked at whether there were differences in vaccination rates and intention between men and women. In a new study appearing in the journal Frontiers in Global Women's Health , researchers found that while women and men self-reported similar COVID-19 vaccination rates in 2022, unvaccinated men expressed more intention to get vaccinated than unvaccinated women. Women tend to have better health-seeking behaviors than men overall.
However, most studies relating to COVID-19 vaccination have found that intention has been lower among women. "We wondered whether this would hold true at the uptake level," says Rawlance Ndejjo, a leader of the new study and an assistant lecturer in the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health at Makerere University. The comparable vaccination rates between men and women in the study is "a good thing to see," adds Lula Chen, research director at MIT Governance Lab (GOV/LAB) and a co-author of the new study.
"There wasn't anything gendered about how [the vaccine] was being advertised or who was actually getting access to it." Women's lower intention to vaccinate seemed to be driven by concerns about vaccine safety , suggesting that providing factual information about vaccine safety from trusted sources, like the Ministry of Health, could increase uptake. The work is a collaboration be.
