Covid-19 vaccine is Africa’s moonshot

Views from around the world. These opinions are not necessarily shared by Stuff newspapers.

There are countries that simply cannot afford the Covid-19 vaccine and also lack the logistical infrastructure to efficiently roll out a vaccination campaign. Many of them are in Africa. Studies by international bodies show only about a third of African countries could successfully roll out a Covid-19 vaccination campaign if the shots became available to them today.

Accounting for a fifth of the world population, Africa surprisingly has had the least number of Covid-19 cases for any region of the world. That makes it one of the places where early vaccination could yield the biggest dividends. In the world of cold calculations, however, that again is what pushes it further down the merit order for delivery of the jabs. Time should not be wasted lamenting Africa’s fate. Instead the interlude should be used to fix existing gaps. It is a rule of thumb that a vaccine will only offer protection if it covers the majority of the population. Experts talk of a need for at least twothirds of the population to be inoculated, to deliver demonstrable gains.

Vaccination should be treated as amoonshot. To run a cold chain that keeps the temperature of the vaccine at minus 70 degrees Celsius requires a reliable energy supply, good roads to deliver doses to the remotest communities within a tight window of opportunity, and millions of trained health workers. Above all, it requires functioning and accountable political systems.