Stop supply supremacy
It is wanted for murder
COVID-19 is a global pandemic. Yet rich nations are treating it as a national disease. The United States is the first to start the vaccine nationalism queue. The United Kingdom and the European Union are not too far behind in hoarding jabs for themselves. What is worse, the EU and the UK are using Covid-19 vaccines as a geopolitical tool to settle scores. Meanwhile, at least 30 countries, according to one media report, have yet to administer a single shot. Not because they are anti-vaxxers, but they just have no access to them. Even Kenya, which is one of the wealthier countries in Africa, only received its first million doses on March 2. Not before many health workers gave their lives to save others in the country, reports The New York Times.
Others are faring far more badly. Epidemiologists and public health experts in the rich North have been warning their politicians on the importance of global herd immunity. This means vaccinating all the estimated eight billion people around the planet. At two shots per arm, that will be 16 billion doses. This is a humongous number for the few nations that can make the vaccine — the US, UK, EU, Russia, China and India — but it can be done. Media reports quoting pharmaceutical sources say this is doable, even by the end of this year. As the World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus puts it in his op-ed piece this month in The Guardian, “If we can put a rover on Mars, we can surely produce billions of vaccines and save lives on Earth.” Only if supply supremacy is shown the exit. The Conversation, a news portal by the academic and research community based in Melbourne, Australia, shows how serious a problem supply supremacy has become. Take just three hoarders, the EU, UK and Canada. If the Duke Global Health Innovation Center in the US is right, the EU has ordered 1.6 billion doses for its estimated adult population of 375 million. Should all orders head Brussels way, the bloc will have some 525 million surplus doses. As for the UK, it is a case of 219 million doses for 54 million adults, giving it 165 million jabs too many. Canada, having placed an order for 188 million doses for 32 million adults, will be sitting on an excess of 156 million doses.
The troubling thing is the three are not the only ones who have ordered more than they need. Little wonder, Tedros, in his opening remarks at the 148th session of WHO’s executive board meeting, labelled supply supremacy as putting the world “on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure”. He is right. What else can it be called when, on Jan 18, as he spoke to the board, more than 39 million doses of vaccine had been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries, but just 25 doses in one lowest-income country? No, this isn’t a typographical error. Not 25 million, not 25 thousand. Just 25 doses. Not to mention the 30 countries that have received none. What a dismal tale this rich nation-poor nation divide makes. True, the world sundered ages ago as North-South nations may live to see the end of the 21st century. But the world of vaccine “haves” and “have-nots” will not if all eight billion people do not get their jabs. As the public service copy says, no one will be safe until everyone is. Health inequity kills.
As the public service copy says, no one will be safe until everyone is. Health inequity kills.