ISOPP is honored to formally endorse the FIP commitment on building vaccine confidence.
During World Immunisation Week, the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) launched the "FIP commitment to leveraging pharmacists to build vaccine confidence and address vaccine hesitancy and complacency". This document is based on FIP's earlier publication "Building vaccine confidence and communicating vaccine value: A toolkit for pharmacists" (2021).
FIP has noted that vaccine hesitancy is a major threat to global health and an important barrier to the success of vaccination strategies worldwide. They say vaccination strategies will not be universal and fully successful until the global challenge of vaccine hesitancy and complacency is adequately addressed. Addressing vaccine hesitancy, building vaccine confidence and effectively communicating the value of vaccines to patients is an imperative for global health and for the pharmacy profession in particular.
This document states the commitment of FIP and pharmacists worldwide to counter vaccine hesitancy and misinformation by leveraging pharmacists' expert knowledge and trusted position in communities.
This commitment can be used to highlight this role to the World Health Organization and other stakeholders, and to support FIP member organizations at country level in advancing and highlighting this important role of pharmacists, especially as so much hesitancy to vaccines has arisen in recent times.
FIP will present the commitment with the endorsements at an online summit on "Vaccination needs of special-risk groups" - an intersectoral roundtable event.