RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Strategies for developing and advancing good public relations can be recognized in nearly all fields of life without making an exception for the healthcare industry. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, matters of public health have gathered more force. The importance of effective public relations for improving healthcare is highlighted by the position that immediate access to reliable health information should be the hallmark of a just society. However, the strategies available for addressing major threats to the uptake of public health services such as mass vaccination campaigns are not properly studied and documented in the Ghanaian context. This organizational case study explored strategies used by healthcare professionals working with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to address COVID-19-related vaccine hesitancy in the country. METHODS: We performed a qualitative inquiry with semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 25 public health officials of the GHS. The interviews were timed to coincide with the mass deployment of COVID-19 vaccines in four Regions. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling. Data collected included demographic characteristics, perspectives on public relations strategies used in the past year to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake as well as successes and pitfalls. Thematic analysis was performed with NVIVO software to generate themes from interview transcripts. RESULTS: Four main themes emerged from the data analysis and these are presented. Healthcare workers perceived vaccine hesitancy to be a threat with the potential to undermine an important strategic organizational goal related to COVID-19 illness. In terms of PR strategies, we determined that a combination of informative, motivational, persuasive and coercive public relations strategies was employed by the Ghana Health Service to address the challenge of vaccine hesitancy. We further found that PR strategies were deployed across both traditional (print, radio, TV) and emerging/social media networks. Officials were optimistic that the strategies would produce results, but were uncertain whether they could attribute current successes or failures to the PR strategies used. CONCLUSION: Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, public relations strategies which have been employed by the Ghana Health Service to address vaccine hesitancy are characterized and catalogued. The nature of the audience and PR strategies employed suggests that the effect of these strategies may be short-lived unless they are constantly reinforced by the GHS. These findings show that effective PR strategies exist for addressing vaccine hesitancy in public health practice.
RESUMO
Real-world data on vaccine-elicited neutralising antibody responses for two-dose AZD1222 in African populations are limited. We assessed baseline SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and levels of protective neutralizing antibodies prior to vaccination rollout using binding antibodies analysis coupled with pseudotyped virus neutralisation assays in two cohorts from West Africa: Nigerian healthcare workers (n = 140) and a Ghanaian community cohort (n = 527) pre and post vaccination. We found 44 and 28% of pre-vaccination participants showed IgG anti-N positivity, increasing to 59 and 39% respectively with anti-receptor binding domain (RBD) IgG-specific antibodies. Previous IgG anti-N positivity significantly increased post two-dose neutralizing antibody titres in both populations. Serological evidence of breakthrough infection was observed in 8/49 (16%). Neutralising antibodies were observed to wane in both populations, especially in anti-N negative participants with an observed waning rate of 20% highlighting the need for a combination of additional markers to characterise previous infection. We conclude that AZD1222 is immunogenic in two independent West African cohorts with high background seroprevalence and incidence of breakthrough infection in 2021. Waning titres post second dose indicates the need for booster dosing after AZD1222 in the African setting despite hybrid immunity from previous infection.
