COVID-19 and HIV: Prejudices and barriers to getting vaccinated
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu12.2024.207Abstract
The threat of HIV transmission remains high in both the Russian Federation and the world, even though global epidemiological trends have changed. The COVID-19 pandemic that broke out in 2019 and the institutional changes in the health system caused by it had a significant impact on people living with HIV and on representatives of the most vulnerable groups of the population to HIV, exacerbating the problem of unequal access to medical services. The large flow of testing for COVID-19 has reduced the number of tests for other diseases, including HIV. AIDS control centers have been redesigned exclusively to work with patients infected with COVID-19 in some regions of Russia due to a shortage of medical personnel. It led to a violation of access to dispensary monitoring of HIV-infected people. According to Charitable Foundation “Humanitarian Action”, there were barriers to vaccination among people living with HIV and those most vulnerable to HIV, mainly due to lack of information on this issue. The article presents the results of an online survey aimed at identifying barriers and biases that prevent vaccination against COVID-19 coronavirus among people living with HIV and representatives of the most vulnerable groups of the population to HIV. The online survey was conducted with the involvement of consortiums and forums working within the project “Cascade”. The study involved 324 respondents, mainly from three regions of the Russian Federation (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Chelyabinsk). As a result of the survey, the prevalence of COVID-19 coronavirus in the surveyed groups was assessed, the attitudes of respondents regarding COVID-19 vaccination were characterized, specific barriers and biases preventing COVID-19 vaccination among people living with HIV and representatives of key population groups were described, and other factors influencing the their willingness to be vaccinated.
Keywords:
vaccination, COVID-19, pandemic, key populations, quantitative and qualitative research
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Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Sociology" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.