Professional discussion on the benefits of the vaccines against COVID-19

Our team organizes professional discussions about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines with non-emergency healthcare professionals. The discussion, held last week, is part of a series of events that will cover all provinces of the country.

The initiative enables physicians to share good practices with each other in communicating the COVID-19 vaccination with patients and to discuss strategies for addressing concerns with our team of specialists. We focus on changing the attitude of citizens who have not yet been vaccinated but intend to do so. Their hesitation is the result of aggressive misinformation, not the denial of vaccination in general. Turning off fake news with easily verifiable facts from doctors will speed up the process of immunization against the coronavirus infection. Among the problems facing the desire for vaccination in Bulgaria is the fact that it is a highly politicized topic in the country. Fortunately, studies show that Bulgarians strongly trusts their general practitioners, which allows GPs in Bulgaria to influence the attitude of their patients towards vaccines. Efforts in this direction will break the trends and will change the unenviable last place where Bulgaria is in terms of immunization coverage against COVID-19.

The discussion lasted more than two hours and was led by Prof. Radostina Alexandrova – virologist from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Dr. Hristiana Batselova – epidemiologist from the Medical University of Plovdiv. They answered participants’ questions and presented strategies for addressing common concerns among their patients.

The series of professional seminars with specialists in non-emergency healthcare is carried out with the support of the Ministry of Health and the regional health inspectorates, the Bulgarian offices of WHO and UNICEF, the Center for Analysis and Crisis Communications, and many other national and international organizations and various experts.

Following discussions will take place in Plovdiv and Pleven.