India will be key to ensure vaccine for world: Experts
With the race to develop a SARS-COV-2 vaccine gathering pace, global health experts have played up India’s role in ensuring its availability across the world.
V K Paul, member of NITI Aayog, said the country’s technological capabilities will not just be for India but the whole world. He said that in India, the best scientific and ethical principles, along with a regulatory mechanism, are in place to ensure the same.
“This is being watched by none other than our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) himself,” Paul said.
Criticising the rising ‘vaccine nationalism’, microbiologist Peter Piot — who has been appointed by the European Commission a special advisor — said India had a key role to play in making the vaccine available to the world. “Without you, we won’t have enough vaccines to serve the world,” he said during an international vaccine symposium organised by the Indian Council of Medical Research. He elaborated that India has vaccine makers like the Serum Institute, Biological E, and Bharat Biotech.
India has expressed its interest in joining Covax — the World Health Organization (WHO)Gavi vaccine alliance — which is working closely with vaccine developers as well as countries, to pool in resources and share the risk of development. The objective is to achieve scale of manufacturing as soon as a candidate tastes success.
Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director (South-east Asia) at WHO, said the body was supporting the Covax facility. She added that the WHO was already working on the allocation framework for Covid-19 vaccines, to ensure equitable distribution. “The initial tranche of doses will be made available to all countries, to ensure health workers are immunised, followed by highrisk adults. Subsequent allocations will be made based on the country and vulnerability of the population,” she said.
Khetrapal said the traditional platforms were insufficient to deliver the scale of manufacturing required. There was growing consensus among activists in India that it needs to ensure a fair supply of vaccines in case an international candidate gets approved first.
Balram Bhargava, director general of ICMR, said: “India has been one of the largest producers of low-cost vaccines, supplied to over 150 countries. It will require collaborations across borders.”
Though the need for a vaccine is ‘great and urgent’, he said one needs to balance speed with safety. US physician and immunologist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “We should do what we can to accelerate it, but without shortcuts.”