There is no dearth of a policy that makes fair and effective access to Covid-19 vaccine, but its global distribution is in a mess with those who need it most left behind.
What we gather from reports around the world is that the vaccine rollouts are not serving the most vulnerable populations in the world. They continue to put low-income communities at a higher risk of getting and dying from the coronavirus vaccine and its variants.
Wealthy countries have more than enough vaccine doses to protect their people from the ravages of the virus, while the poorest countries do not!
We saw them expanding vaccinations to younger and younger people and unheeded the repeated pleas of health experts to donate their doses. Instead most of them debated on providing booster shots even as poor countries struggle to vaccinate the most vulnerable.
We also witnessed countries, which are home to giant pharmas producing the vaccine, blocked its exports as a protective gear for their people!
It has not been long since we heard lamentations from the United Nations that millions or billions of people are left susceptible to coronavirus due to the inequitable vaccine distribution and allowing even more deadly variants to emerge and spread across the globe.
Experts familiar with the current scenario agree that an unequal distribution of vaccines will deepen inequality and increase the gap between rich and poor and will reverse decades of hard-won progress on human development.
They foresee a world without Covid-19 will not be possible until everyone has equal access to vaccines. Reports indicate that the pandemic has already claimed over 4.6 million people since its breakout in the beginning of 2020. New variants of concern mean that the risks of infection have increased in all countries for people who are not yet protected by vaccination.
The reality is that the majority of those who have been administered the vaccine are in high- and upper-middle-income countries. And the world leaders blissfully forget the fact that one of the best ways to keep people in any country is to vaccinate the world.
If I quote Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union’s envoy for vaccine acquisition, “It’s like a famine in which the richest guys grab the baker”.
A report by science analytics company Airfinity in October last exposed the severity of vaccine inequity between high-income and low-income countries, especially in Africa. It found that G20 countries have received 15 times more Covid-19 vaccine doses per capita than countries in sub-Saharan Africa!
Countries which have amassed extra vaccine doses must immediately redistribute them to poor countries before they expire in the coming months. There is no time to waste. A delay will bring more unnecessary and uncalled risk and injustice by nurturing new, potentially deadlier variants exposing more people to infection and death.
It is an appropriate question that Peter Singer of the World Health Organization raised, “Do we love our neighbours like we love ourselves? Do we really think that every human life is of equal value?”
Vaccines allow us to come together. They let us meet face to face in our workplaces, help our children to study shoulder to shoulder in schools, do community works together and pray together at places of worship.
They are the key steps to break the chain, end the pandemic and its variants so we can get back to doing the things that we enjoy, with thepeople we love.
Also we should not ignore that we live in an intimate, global world. Whatever happens in other countries, most likely, will connect to us as well. If we want to curtail the emergence of new variants, we definitely need to help with greater vaccine distribution!
