Global Vaccine Access Demands Combating Both Inequity And Hesitancy

The world's population suffered from lack of access to COVID-19 vaccines. Although inequities in vaccine availability for low- and middle-income countries are widely cited as a component of this lack of access, there is a related but less discussed component: vaccine refusal or hesitancy. Regarding the first component (global vaccine inequities), there are multiple dimensions to this topic and its causes, but for low- and middle-income countries, the most glaring one resulted from upstream science policies that prioritized speed and innovation at the expense of technologies that could be produced by low- and middle-income country vaccine producers. Regarding the second component (vaccine refusal or hesitancy), as COVID-19 waves swept across the United States in 2021, thousands of unvaccinated Americans perished from refusing COVID-19 immunizations. These deaths occurred because of an expanding antiscience ecosystem that now extends into low- and middle-income countries and could block the uptake of new vaccines or routine childhood immunizations. Future vaccine policies must address both elements of global access and their political identities. This recommendation reflects the author's experiences as a vaccine scientist who both develops affordable COVID-19 and neglected disease vaccines and lives on the front lines combating vaccine refusal.