Vaccines are weaker or dead versions of the original germs, it prepares one's immune system to combat such bacteria, or viruses. Vaccination programmes have helped the world in fighting certain deadly outbreaks and communicable diseases, like hepatitis disease, COVID-19, measles, etc. This programme is benefited by millions of Nigerians during the crisis, and as an assurance for prevention against prevalence and as health security.
The year 2020 was a tough one with COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone was scared of dying and more scared knowing it had no drugs that could fight it. It became a global concern with the medical team on their toes to find either a cure or a vaccine that could boost one's immune system to fight such germs. Nigerians didn't quite believe all the stories, to them it was malaria that was paraded as COVID-19 and our government buying the idea of COVID-19 affecting the masses was more funnier.
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Fast forward to 2021, I was privileged to work as one of the staff administering COVID-19 vaccination in the state where I was posted to. At that time the fear had subsided, people moved around freely except for the precautions that were put in place to avoid transmission. People believed the COVID-19 vaccine had a secret agenda to reduce the population in Africa, this made a lot of people not accept the vaccine. While the COVID-19 vaccination program was ongoing, there were online trends of people having a body with magnetic properties after taking the vaccines, this intensifies the fear and this was one challenge we had with people taking the vaccine.
I wasn't comfortable with it but I tried to convince people to take it, not only because it was good for them but we needed to finish a certain ampule of the vaccine daily. My major duty was taking their record and capturing it on the database. Not everyone had that speculation, some people were literal enough to know the trends weren't true and that vaccines were made to help us. I took both the first and second dose after learning from people who took it that it had no side effects and this was an extra confidence that I was prepared for anything, not minding the crowd and the guy coughing next to me.