Attitudes to malaria vaccination in children: what can be learned from their consistency with the temporal dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination intention? A prospective cohort study in rural Senegal (July 2020-November 2023).

Publication date: Sep 08, 2025

Several sub-Saharan African countries are launching malaria vaccination programmes for children. We assessed how attitudes to malaria vaccination for children could be better understood by considering the individual dynamics of COVID-19 vaccine intention/uptake over the 2021-2023 campaigns, with a view to highlighting barriers likely to affect malaria vaccine uptake. We conducted a six-wave telephone-based survey of 600 randomly selected Senegalese households. A latent class mixed model was used to assess temporal changes in COVID-19 vaccine intention/uptake and to identify clusters of individuals sharing similar intention/uptake patterns across the waves. Time-invariant and time-varying correlates were assessed using logistic and probit models. Attitudes to malaria vaccination (wave 6) were compared with the various COVID-19 patterns. Of the 600 households contacted, 558 (93. 00%) agreed to participate in the study (558 heads of household and 457 spouses). Very strong positive attitudes to malaria vaccination (65. 28% of participants) were associated with higher personal COVID-19 vaccine uptake (p

Semantics

Original Article