Health and Child Care permanent secretary, Aspect Maunganidze, has warned that vaccine misinformation spreading on social media poses a growing threat to immunisation programmes in Africa.
Maunganidze urged public health leaders to strengthen science-based communication to safeguard public confidence in vaccines.
He was speaking at the official opening of the 2026 East and Southern Africa Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) managers’ meeting.
Maunganidze told delegates that access to information does not necessarily translate into access to accurate information, warning that falsehoods about vaccines are spreading faster than efforts to prevent infectious diseases.
“Vaccine confidence remains a critical regional health priority,” Maunganidze said.
“While community engagement has helped ease traditional hesitancy, we are now confronting growing resistance among educated and influential groups who amplify social media misinformation. Access to information does not always mean accurate information.”
Maunganidze said the rapid spread of misleading content online was undermining decades of progress made through immunisation programmes and called on health professionals to adopt more effective communication strategies.
He stressed that building vaccine confidence requires more than simply presenting scientific facts, saying communities must be engaged in ways that acknowledge cultural contexts and address public concerns openly and honestly.
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“Vaccines remain among the safest, most rigorously tested, and most effective interventions ever developed, saving millions of lives.
We must continue to champion evidence over misinformation and science over speculation,” he added
