COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake Programme in Iraq

​

Lead Faculty:

Professor Shinwy Bakhtyiar Radha

A Proposal by Team 9 with UIMS

Contents

1. Reasons for vaccine hesitancy (Amel)
2. Government mistrust (Iman)
3. Decline in healthcare (Maryam)
4. Rewarding vaccine uptake using psychology (Nupur)
5. Socio-economic impact of Covid-19 (Nishan)
6. How to attract people to vaccine centres (Joselyn)
7. Informing the population about vaccines (Liliana)
8. Programme financing (Ali)

Reasons for vaccine hesitancy

​

• Undecided on taking the vaccine
• Access
• Political Agenda
• Culture war on social media
• Anti-vaxxers

​

Government mistrust

‏The government cannot convince people with

‏one message for everyone. We all think differently as human beings and we have to respect that

• ‏If the government does not understand these two things, it opens the door to all kinds of doubt and fears, so explaining these two things in a clear and simple way can succeed in convincing people

• ‏in my opinion in the case of expressing virus is it like in the case of being in a state of war, Vaccination can be interpreted as a safe weapon against the virus.A guide on how to use it, its importance, get rid of disease and masks, and its safety and the safety of others
• ‏Because this disease came from animals, not humans, you can tell them in a way that it's like a training camp or a simulation in a war game for your body that doesn't make you sick.

• ‏Because what doctors and the government have published on social sites and health institutions are unclear and understandable comparisons that people cannot understand.

• ‏Because competent authorities do not use clear and understandable comparisons that people can understand in relation to two stories
• One is “how vaccines are made” and the other is “how do vaccines work”.

The Decline in Healthcare:

​

• Since the 1980s, the Iraqi healthcare system witnessed severe decline in the quality of services, funding allocations, and capacity to treat the increasing population

​

• This decline in the healthcare sector associated with the increased corruption within the government deterred people from relying on public health facilities and decreased their trust in the federal healthcare system. This distrust was exaggerated during the COVID-19 pandemic

​

• Iraqi people do not trust medical advice from physicians and rely heavily on community medicine and traditional healing methods to treat their illnesses.

​

• Iraqi people do not trust the federal health authority (Ministry of Health) and follow religious and community leaders.

Incentivizing Vaccine Uptake

• Motivation can be extrinsic or intrinsic
• The Iraqi population is opposed to getting the vaccine, so in order to get it there must be some kind of reward
• Human nature to like receiving rewards
• Incentives will serve to hopefully bring more people to a vaccine center in the first place

The effect of COVID-19 on poor people in Iraq

A lot of people lost their jobs during the pandemic in Iraq which lead to extreme increase in poverty:

1. Factory and construction workers.
2. Employees.
3. Business owners.

How to attract people to vaccine centres

Steps to try and draw people to come into vaccine centers:

​

First: Give food to young people. If an individual person is young and doesn’t have any children, then a simple sandwich could be offered as incentive

​

Second: Give food to families. If someone is a caretaker of a family, then he or she could bring their family members to the vaccine center for a bag of groceries with rice, flour, sugar, grains, canned goods, tuna and baby food)

​

Not only will this incentive motivate the people of Iraq to enter vaccine centers, it will help reduce the hunger population as Iraq is a poor nation with many people having low incomes, living in poverty and many people losing food security during Covid.

​

​

The Science - Explained

• The Immune System
• How the body fights off infections
• COVID Vaccine
• Uses “memory” to fight off infections
• Herd Immunity
• Make the spread of diseases, such as COVID, unlikely

Project Finances

• A programme such as this would require extensive research into the logistics that are in place within the distribution area

​

• The largest cost factor would be the procurement of large consumables such as rice or a bag of groceries

​

• A pilot study can be conducted to examine the cost efficiency of the proposed project, and subsequently expanded to reach more communities

Thank You!