Facebook users’ attitudes towards Human papillomavirus vaccination in South Africa (Preprint)

BACKGROUND On February 28, 2023, the Facebook page of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) South Africa, announced the beginning of the HPV vaccination campaign for 2023. The announcement read: ‘‘Protect your daughter from cervical cancer and make sure she gets her HPV vaccine at school.” The post garnered several comments and reactions from Facebook users. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine the attitudes of Facebook users, who commented on the UNICEF South Africa post, towards HPV vaccination to inform the development and implementation of interventions that can increase HPV vaccine acceptance and uptake METHODS We used basic thematic analysis approach to analyse the content of the comments. Two authors (EJM and AJ) independently coded the responses through line-by-line readings as pro-vaccination, anti-vaccination or neutral. After labelling the data with the three main codes, we then used an inductive thematic analysis approach to extract emerging themes from the comments within each code. RESULTS Several comments were questions regarding the eligible criteria for vaccination, side effects, consent form, and vaccination strategies. Many Facebook users were hesitant towards HPV vaccination due to various reasons including concerns around side effects, religious beliefs, vaccine stock outs, and their distrust in the institutions or systems involved in vaccination programmes. Few users accepted HPV vaccination because they believed that it was a very important thing to do, beneficial for the children’s health, and they have vaccinated their children before. CONCLUSIONS Our findings of the current study contribute to the promotion of acceptance and uptake of HPV vaccination by developing and implementing social media-based interventions tailored to address identified barriers that are associated with hesitant to HPV vaccination.