The Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) has launched an in­no­v­a­tive re­gion­al on­line schools’ game show aimed at im­prov­ing the pub­lic’s un­der­stand­ing, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple and their par­ents, about COVID-19 and vac­ci­na­tion process­es.

The COVID-19 and Im­mu­ni­sa­tion game show, en­ti­tled “Take Your Best Shot”, al­so pro­mot­ed rou­tine im­mu­ni­sa­tion for bet­ter over­all health and well-be­ing.

In a state­ment, CARPHA said this unique pi­lot project, which was fund­ed by the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, East­ern and South­ern Caribbean (US­AID/ESC) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund, East­ern Caribbean (UNICEF), saw stu­dents from eight sec­ondary schools in two Caribbean states – Guyana and St. Lu­cia com­pete for grand prizes.

In its five-year strate­gic plan, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) iden­ti­fied vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy as one of the ten glob­al health threats the world faces in 2019 and be­yond. Vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy has been de­fined by the WHO Strate­gic Ad­vi­so­ry Group of Ex­perts (SAGE) work­ing group as the ‘‘de­lay in ac­cep­tance or re­fusal of vac­ci­na­tion de­spite the avail­abil­i­ty of vac­ci­na­tion ser­vices.”

Dr Joy St. John, CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor ex­plained, “His­tor­i­cal­ly, the Caribbean had one of the best im­mu­ni­sa­tion records in the world. How­ev­er, re­cent stud­ies in­di­cat­ed that rou­tine im­mu­ni­sa­tions had been de­clin­ing due to hes­i­tan­cy caused by mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

Dr St. John added that COVID-19 heav­i­ly ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion, re­sult­ing in doubt about the ef­fi­ca­cy of vac­cines in gen­er­al.

In light of this, CARPHA said in part­ner­ship with US­AID and UNICEF, it cre­at­ed this in­no­v­a­tive pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme to share ac­cu­rate, ev­i­dence-based in­for­ma­tion that would com­bat mis­in­for­ma­tion, ad­dress con­cerns, and im­prove un­der­stand­ing about vac­cines, in­clud­ing the COVID-19 vac­cine.