“Science has done its part by offering, faster than any other outbreak in history, powerful tools to save lives”said the Director-General of WHO, the Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
“Thanks to the vaccine we are gradually seeing the light again,” says our
However, a UNESCO report from August 2021, indicates that, While one in four people in high-income countries has received at least one dose of the vaccine, in low-income countries the proportion is one in 350 people. This has to do with several reasons: the pandemic imposed a great burden on the region’s already weakened health systems – which must also treat other endemic diseases, such as malaria and dengue – and limitations in global vaccine production and the differences in the negotiating capacities of the countries imply difficulties in access. In this sense, it is estimated that the 27 richest countries and territories in the world, comprising only 10% of the world’s population, have administered 32% of the doses available in the world.
The Covax is a WHO program to ensure that people in every corner of the world have access to COVID-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless of wealth.
Covax was designed to facilitate the delivery of vaccine doses to poor countries, paid for by the rich. But of the 640 million doses that were to be delivered in early August, only 163 million have arrived. For some analysts it is nothing less than a declaration of “moral bankruptcy” of the developed north.
Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija, the African Union Covid Vaccine Distribution Alliance (AVDA), has already warned the European Commission and France that the Covax vaccination initiative, launched by the WHO in April 2020, is at risk of failure, “However, for the sake of humanity, you must not,” he said.
According to WHO estimates, some 11 billion doses will be needed to end the pandemic worldwide.
The vaccine nationalism approach, adopted by some countries to gain preferential access to COVID-19 vaccines, has led to a threat to the fair and equitable distribution of potential vaccines around the world.
This self-centered political behavior of leaving others behind is shortsighted, potentially risky, morally indefensible, and virtually ineffective in containing the pandemic.
In his message last Christmas, the Pope Francisco said “In this time of darkness and uncertainty due to the pandemic, lights of hope emerge like the discovery of vaccines, but for these lights to illuminate and bring hope to everyone, they must be available to everyone ”, Francisco asked that “closed nationalisms” do not interfere with universal access to the vaccine and do not prevent us from living “as the true human family that we are.” And he added: “We cannot let the virus of radical individualism defeat us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters.” He also demanded that in the distribution of injections to stop the virus “the laws of the market and patents” do not take precedence over “the laws of love and the health of humanity”
Experts fear that, if the current distribution system continues, the virus could continue to mutate, making current vaccines ineffective, In addition to having devastating economic, political and moral consequences, this means that the virus will continue to spread and mutate, increasing the risk that our vaccine list will not effectively cover new strains.
No one is safe until we all are.
The great powers of the world still have time to get away from this moral bankruptcy, the path is precisely the one marked by the Supreme Pontiff:
“Less guns and more food, less hypocrisy and more transparency, more vaccines distributed fairly and fewer rifles sold foolishly.”
Advisor and specialist in occupational hazards.
Source From: Ambito
