University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine.
Epidemiol Infect. 2023 Aug 7;151:e139. doi: 10.1017/S0950268823001267.
The current study aimed to explore Palestinian university students' perceptions and concerns about COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy. Our sample comprised 50 university students selected using snowball sampling techniques from Palestinian universities in the West Bank, Palestine. Thematic content analysis was conducted to identify the main themes of semi-structured interviews with students. The results of the thematic content analysis yielded four main themes: Participants expressed concerns and doubts about the vaccine's safety, showing high hesitancy and scepticism; they also reported different causes for COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in the Palestinian context, such as the lack of confidence in vaccines, false beliefs about vaccines, and peculiar political instability and conflict of the Palestinian territories enduring a military occupation undermining the health system's capacity to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak appropriately. Health authorities and policymakers are urgently called to invest in and potentiate awareness campaigns to change the diffuse people's stereotypes related to the COVID-19 vaccine in the Palestinian territories.
本研究旨在探讨巴勒斯坦大学生对 COVID-19 疫苗犹豫的看法和担忧。我们的样本由来自巴勒斯坦西岸巴勒斯坦大学的 50 名大学生组成，采用雪球抽样技术选取。对学生进行半结构化访谈的主题内容分析，以确定主要主题。主题内容分析的结果产生了四个主要主题：参与者对疫苗的安全性表示担忧和怀疑，表现出高度的犹豫和怀疑；他们还报告了在巴勒斯坦背景下 COVID-19 疫苗犹豫的不同原因，例如对疫苗缺乏信心、对疫苗的错误信念、以及特殊的政治不稳定和冲突，巴勒斯坦领土长期处于军事占领下，破坏了卫生系统应对 COVID-19 爆发的适当能力。卫生当局和政策制定者迫切需要投资并加强宣传活动，以改变与巴勒斯坦领土 COVID-19 疫苗相关的弥散人群刻板印象。
