Permanent Secretary for Health and Child Care, Dr. Aspect Maunganidze, has warned that vaccine misinformation spreading on social media poses a growing threat to immunisation programmes across Africa, urging public health leaders to strengthen science-based communication to safeguard public confidence in vaccines.
Speaking at the official opening of the 2026 East and Southern Africa Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) Managers’ Meeting in Harare, yesterday, Dr. Maunganidze told delegates that access to information does not necessarily translate to access to accurate information, warning that falsehoods about vaccines are spreading faster than efforts to prevent infectious diseases.
“Vaccine confidence remains a critical regional health priority. While community engagement has helped ease traditional hesitancy, we are now confronting growing resistance among educated and influential groups who amplify social media misinformation. Access to information does not always mean accurate information,” he said.
Dr Maunganidze said the rapid spread of misleading content online was undermining decades of progress made through immunisation programmes and called on health professionals to adopt more effective communication strategies.
“Misinformation can travel faster than the diseases we fight to prevent. As public health leaders, we have a responsibility to counter myths by communicating science with clarity, transparency and deep cultural understanding,” he said.
The Permanent Secretary stressed that building vaccine confidence requires more than simply presenting scientific facts, saying communities must be engaged in ways that acknowledge cultural contexts and address public concerns openly and honestly.
“Vaccines remain among the safest, most rigorously tested, and most effective interventions ever developed, saving millions of lives.
We must continue to champion evidence over misinformation and science over speculation,” he added.
The meeting comes at a time when global health organisations are increasingly warning that declining vaccine confidence and the spread of misinformation threaten to reverse gains made in controlling preventable diseases, making sustained public trust in vaccines more important than ever.
