“We understand how important it is to include COVID-19 vaccination in the curriculum of medical and nursing students, because they are the health-care providers of tomorrow,” explains Samir Javadov, Assistant Professor of Immunology at the Azerbaijan Medical University.
Azerbaijan has set itself ambitious targets to strengthen its immunization system’s capacities in order to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake and improve routine immunization service delivery.
Efforts include training-of-trainers courses to upskill current health-care workers on immunization topics and support them in passing on their new-found knowledge to peers. There are also plans to update the medical school curriculum by integrating practical sessions and introducing new COVID-19 vaccination resources and content in core teaching.
The new curriculum will include an innovative immunization and community health rotation system to provide hands-on training on immunization in rural Azerbaijan for medical and nursing students.
Improving vaccine access and uptake by moving closer to the people
Piloted in April this year, during European Immunization Week 2022, students worked onsite in communities to increase vaccination uptake in the rural Shamakhi region. The students helped increase confidence in COVID-19 vaccination by addressing people’s specific concerns.
Leyla Karimli, a third-year student at Baku Nursing School who did her placement in the village of Gushchu, says, “I believe as health-care workers we need to be respectful and positive while engaging with the local population. Dealing with villagers and community members directly was very new to all of us and I found being a bridge between the doctors and the villages was a wonderful experience.”
In Azerbaijan, health-care workers are not distributed evenly across the country; instead most are concentrated in Baku, the capital. These temporary placements not only provide students with opportunities to promote and administer COVID-19 vaccines, but also highlight gaps in medical care that can impact immunization coverage for routine vaccines. In addition, they bolster students’ understanding of the relationship between medical practice and social trust.
Building trust and countering misinformation
The curriculum will also teach medical students how to address vaccine hesitancy.
“We had some challenges at the very start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, with misconceptions and misinformation lingering in the media and elsewhere. We needed to get involved with educational efforts to disseminate the truth about vaccines,” Samir points out.
Rahim Kalashov, a sixth-year student at the Azerbaijan Medical University, was placed in the village of Goylar. “In Goylar, most villagers were vaccinated, so we focused on the unvaccinated members of the community using targeted advocacy and outreach information, trying to counter ungrounded rumours,” he explains. For example, “It appeared that pregnant and breastfeeding women were afraid of vaccination. They were seeking permission from the elder person in the family, or from their husband, to be vaccinated. We provided families with vaccination guidelines and gave evidence-based explanations.”
Rahim adds, “This helped change people’s minds – by explaining that staying unvaccinated poses a risk to entire families, particularly the pregnant woman and unborn children. Talking and listening to family members, and including elder family members in the conversation, was crucial.”
Following the activity, most of the pregnant women in Goylar sought to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Partnering with the European Union in the 6 Eastern Partnership countries
Improvements to the education curriculum that will increase both knowledge and practice related to COVID-19 vaccination were based on guidance from WHO and the Ministry of Health in Azerbaijan.
The related activities were financially supported by the European Union, which is continuing its partnership with WHO/Europe in providing critical assistance to ensure effective COVID-19 vaccination rollout and strengthen the immunization systems in the 6 Eastern Partnership countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.