acmedsci published this video item, entitled “COVID vaccines – trust, uptake and rollout | Dr Waseem Bani & Dr Melanie Saville” – below is their description.
Hear from a junior doctor finding ways to boost trust & vaccine uptake for people with learning disabilities and people following Islam, and from the Director of R&D at CEPI on global vaccine rollout and preparing for future pandemics.
Dr Waseem Bani is a junior doctor and member of the British Islamic Medical Association’s National COVID Response Group. In his local placement in north west England he helped to increase vaccine uptake among patients with learning disabilities from around 50% to around 80%. People with learning disabilities in the UK have an average life expectancy of around 60 years, in contrast to people without learning disabilities who can expect to live on average 20 years longer to around 80 years of age. Waseem’s work helps show that this difference is not just due to comorbidities, but is also an issue of avoidable deaths that can be tackled through better communication.
Waseem’s work extends to reasonable adaptations for the UK’s practising Muslims, including reassurance from religious scholars that vaccines do not count as breaking fasts during Ramadan, and offering vaccination clinics outside of fasting (daylight) hours. He has also worked on translations and Q&As to help combat misinformation.
Dr Melanie Saville is Director of Vaccine Research & Development at the Coalition for
Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). CEPI was set up in the wake of the west Africa Ebola epidemics in 2014-15, to help the world prepare for a future Disease X. The realisation that Disease X had arrived, and that the world was facing a deadly pathogen about which nothing was known, drew on all the angles of expertise CEPI could offer. From funding rapid development platforms to tracking variants, from international vaccine sharing (COVAX) to manufacturing bottlenecks., CEPI is challenging the world to make safe, effective vaccines available to the whole world – now and in the future.
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