The rate vaccine hesitancy is reported to be quite high in black communities both in the US and around the world. there are several reasons for this, including the fact that historically some vaccines were used on minority groups, black Africans in particular, in ways that were not ethical.
As the COVID crisis continues, statistics indicate that the number of victims in blacks and other minority groups has been disproportionally much higher due, amongst other things, several social and health inequalities that persists within these communities.
Vaccine can help reduce mortality rate in black communities and individuals in these groups can take comfort from the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine was developed thanks to the significant contribution of one their own.
Kizzmekia Corbett is an immunologist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and she is one of the scientists who helped to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for COVID-19 in early 2020.
Corbett is an expert on the front lines of the global race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, and someone who will go down in history as one of the key players in developing the science that will help to stop the pandemic.
Kizzmekia Corbett, one the key scientists who helped develop the Moderna Vaccine.
Developed in collaboration with biotech firm Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the vaccine is now being distributed across the United States and the rest of the world.
Corbett is taking on another challenge: tempering vaccine hesitancy by talking about COVID-19 science in communities of colour within the US.
Despite the high number of infections and deaths in in black communities across the United States, recent polls have indicated that more than half of the Black Americans said they would take a vaccine if it was proven safe and effected by officials.
Health experts in the US have been trying to encourage minorities groups in general and African-American communities to take the vaccine. They have sought to clarify, for those who still have many doubts about the safety of the vaccine, that the Moderna Vaccine was developed by an African American woman and this is an indisputable fact.”
Corbett is one of many Black scientists and doctors who are now engaged in outreach activities during their free time to help educate communities and make scientific knowledge accessible in public forums, as a means to ease health disparities.
