The real challenges of COVID-19 vaccinations

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Ms. Şule Sök, a 22 years old a 4th year medical student at Gazi University, Turkey. She is affiliated to the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

Cases with Covid-19 have been recorded since december 2019. And the world that has witnessed pandemics, already know that accurate and efficient treatment can prevent massive spread of diseases and leaving sequelae, and there can be a healthy environment with the treatment. We said that there were a lot, so one of them is influenza. In the past, influenza which cost a lot of lives was gone down by vaccine. Now, there are 2 vaccines which got approval and currently testing 68 trials for covid-19 and that means dealing with a disease can be easier with them.

 Countries around the world have hard times because of the coronavirus which creates not only health problems but also economic and social problems. A difficult period of the health system can be solved by right management but what is the right way? Revealing vaccines is a huge achievement itself but now the important thing is making a right campaign of the vaccines. There are a couple of challenges for it. Making sure of safety of the vaccine, managing possible adverse effects, and dealing with unpredictable long-reaching adverse effects can be the first ones which come to mind. When the vaccines are getting approval, countries start to stock vaccines according to their campaigns.  Prioritising the people who will get vaccines and making a timeline should be an important issue in the campaign. By the meaning of prioritising, some countries choose health workers and patients with chronic diseases who they have higher risks under this circumstance as the first group. And also prioritising helps to order the community with a system which is defined by each country itself, owing to this, faster vaccination can be achieved and higher risk groups can be protected easily. But defining this system can be a challenge and the last ones or the ones which are not the first can stir up trouble. On the other hand, there is another problem which is follow-up after vaccination to make sure its safety.     

 While starting the campaign, informing about the vaccine should be transparent. It helps to clarify the misinformation about vaccines such as thoughts about its efficiency. Moreover, the anti vaccination movement can restrict the campaign and misguide the community and consequently, it can put back the desired result. So sharing information with an easily understanding way to everyone in the community can be hard, it needs to be both adequate and comprehensible.

 After all, vaccines give us hope to see the end of this pandemic, but carrying it into action has lots of important challenges that need to be managed.

References

https://covid19.ca.gov/vaccines/

About the author

Şule Sök is 22 years old and she is a 4th year medical student at Gazi University.

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