Giacomo De Luca, from Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, will present " Vaccination Hesitancy in Africa: the Unintended Consequence of a Culture Clash?"

Abstract: This paper studies child first year immunisation across Africa, the region of the world clearly lagging behind in terms of overall vaccination (WHO, 2022). We first document a substantially different behaviour in immunisation among Muslim households, whereby children of Muslim families are less likely to complete their first-year vaccination schedule as compared with children with other religious background. Although this divergence appears first in the early 2000s, it emerges more strongly in the 2010s. We find no similar trends among children of different religious background.  We then focus on vaccination hesitancy and propose a potential mechanism for why it increased among Muslim during the period considered. We argue that the relatively more hostile environment against Muslims unfolding in Western countries after the 9/11 terroristic attack has generated a climate of cultural clash, which fostered (among Muslims) distrust of policies perceived as Western-led, including immunisation.