Study: Tanzania herbal medicine bias caused Covid response delay

A new study has identified widespread dependence on traditional medicines, often in preference to conventional vaccines as one of the key factors that defined the general public response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Tanzania.

According to the study findings, public acceptance of the current government’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign introduced in mid-2021 was also complicated by denial of the pandemic adopted by the previous administration under the late John Magufuli.

The research was conducted by Tanzania’s top medical institution, the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), with primary funding from the Amne Salim Fund for Covid-19 Research and its findings made public on March 21.

Researchers noted that opposing political leadership to the pandemic had a strong influence on community attitudes regarding prevention, treatment, information and education sharing, vaccine acceptance as well as uptake.

This confusion in the political space allowed high levels of vaccine hesitancy to prevail and myths and negative perceptions about the disease and the vaccines to spread across the country.

The year-long research began in February 2022.

Mr Magufuli made clear his staunch denial of Covid-19 from the moment the pandemic hit the world in early 2020, dismissing it as a figment of global imagination that had no scientific basis.

He ruled out lockdowns, discouraged face masks, vaccination and other proposed World Health Organization (WHO)-sponsored prevention measures in favour of steam therapy as well as herbal medicines as solutions.

Tanzania also stopped publishing Covid-19 case and death figures in April 2020. However, after his death from a reported heart disease in March 2021, his successor Samia Hassan initiated a series of U-turns on government Covid-19 policy, including introduction of a formal national vaccination programme.

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Covid-19 case and death figures also became publicly available again. By March 29, Tanzania had reported just 42,942 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 846 deaths while administering just under 39.4 million vaccine doses to a 60 million-plus population by March 11.

The MUHAS study also covered mental health challenges that all frontline workers faced, particularly during the pandemic’s peak periods when health centres became almost submerged with in-patients and deaths.

Vaccine hesitancy

“The workers were faced with extreme workloads, difficult decisions, long shifts, lack of physical or psychological safety, moral conflicts, lack of social support, inadequate personal protective equipment, lack of transparency, financial insecurity and stigmatisation,” it said.

Anxiety (89.9 percent), depression (15.2 percent) and stress (53.3 percent) were singled out as the most prevailing mental health challenges for healthcare workers as Tanzania’s health systems (preparedness, response and service delivery processes) came under severe pressure during the pandemic.

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On the use of traditional remedies for to treat and manage Covid-19 alongside WHO-recommended measures, they noted that steam therapy, medicinal herbs and “healthy local foods” as particularly popular in Tanzania.

Some respondents said they would rather delay vaccination until they were sure of safety and effectiveness of the jab while others dismissed the Covid-19 vaccines as just for business for western countries but not for treatments.

There was also high vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in Dar es Salaam who were regarded to be at high risk of contracting severe forms of the disease with little chance of survival.

In Geita, it was found that most communities relied on radio for Covid-19 related information and education based on their political persuasion.