Previous findings showed that the percentage of people who oppose vaccination against COVID-19 varies from country to country, and in Serbia it is between 10% and 30%. Since previous research did not include Roma people from substandard settlements in Belgrade, which are densely populated in small areas, we decided to examine their attitudes. We asked 119 Roma people (51.5% males) aged 18 to 61 years (M = 38.53; SD = 8.34) from substandard settlements in Belgrade several questions about their attitudes towards vaccination against COVID-19. About 60% of them accept vaccination, while 12% consider it ineffective and 12% consider it hazardous. Almost 80% reported that they are either insufficiently informed or not informed at all about vaccines, and the vast majority (83%) use public media for informing themselves. Also, many more respondents emphasized financial aid for vaccinated citizens and certificates for travel abroad than the medical benefits of vaccination. This basic insight into this topic shows that opposition to vaccination in substandard settlements is similarly widespread as among the general population (which is not infrequent), that awareness is worryingly low, and that the public media is almost the only channel for information. The results also indicate that the medical benefits of vaccination should be more emphasized in communication about this issue.
Simunović et al. (Sat,) studied this question.