Suspicious business: COVID-19 vaccination in Palabek refugee settlement, northern Uganda

Abstract

Dichotomised debates in public health discourse regarding COVID-19 vaccine supply and vaccine hesitancy do not capture the realities of vaccine uptake in Palabek refugee settlement, northern Uganda. Issues of supply, which analyse manufacture and distribution, foreground global inequalities and political influences. In contrast, vaccine hesitancy, emphasing rectifying deficiencies in knowledge and trust, leaves little room for the politics that shape vaccine uptake. The ‘vaccine anxieties’ framework problematises these dichotomised debates and proposes consideration of bodily, social and political dimensions.This article builds on the vaccine anxieties framework in relation to ethnographic research conducted in Palabek. Using the worldview of Acholi refugees from South Sudan, a focus on ‘suspicious business’ demonstrates that debates surrounding vaccine supply and hesitancy are intertwined, and, additionally, suggests spiritual elements should be paid greater attention.In Palabek, inconsistencies in distribution directly impacted vaccine uptake. Furthermore, vaccine interventions that built on deficiency models did not work. Vaccine uptake was inseparable from its biopolitical context that continued to perpetuate the same unequal dynamics of power and control that kept wealth circulating amongst certain powers, whilst others faced worsening precarity but remained perpetual recipients of humanitarian assistance and global health intervention, with little prospect of meaningful change.Suspicious business captures fluid dynamics that move between spiritual and physical realms, capturing wider geopolitical dynamics as they are revealed in everyday lives. In doing so, this flexible approach reveals the centrality of the politics of COVID-19, whilst constantly incorporating evolving dynamics. This flexibility provides potential for improving vaccine uptake, if wider geopolitical inequalities are addressed.