General practitioners (GPs) across the region have filmed an important message in multiple languages to encourage vaccine confidence.

Across England, GPs have raised concerns over a lower uptake of coronavirus vaccination among patients from ethnic minority backgrounds – warning that misinformation has left some patients reluctant to come forward.

NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across the Humber, Coast and Vale area, have come together to coordinate video messages from GPs, and are working to promote them to enhance confidence in the vaccine and to dispel any vaccine myths.

Dr Faisel Baig is a GP in North Lincolnshire, and Chair of NHS North Lincolnshire CCG. He explained how reaching out directly to different cultures in our communities is important.

He said: “Coronavirus is a very serious illness that continues to take the lives of many people, and is still causing suffering and sadness across the world.

Across our region we have a diverse range of wonderful languages spoken. We want to reach out to our culturally diverse communities to ensure everyone has the opportunity to hear and understand factual information about the vaccine from their local doctors and thus encourage vaccine confidence.

We aim to continue to reproduce our vaccine confidence message in as many languages as we can, to enable us to help as many people as possible in our communities to understand the importance of this vaccine, and what it can do to help protect us and our loved ones.”

The Humber, Coast and Vale coronavirus vaccine information videos in different languages can be viewed on their YouTube channel here.