Time to share our jabs with world
aS an nhS general management trainee in london and a global health graduate, I was elated when the national vaccination programme was announced in December. at last, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. being involved in the vaccination programme at a large hospital trust has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. Yet I feel a personal conflict with the announcement that the government vaccine taskforce has bought 60 million doses for an autumn booster programme. It is reassuring for me as a british citizen, but so demoralising when there’s a global lack of vaccine availability. Many other countries need those 60 million vaccines much more than we do. We have ordered more than 500 million doses for a nation of just over 66 million people — a huge surplus. our politicians are aware of this, so have donated to the CoVaX initiative, which aims to achieve equitable global access to vaccines, and will donate any surplus to other countries. but it’s not right for the world’s poorest nations to wait in line for the discarded crumbs from the tables of wealthy countries. I believe that to do so is to allow historic colonial power relations to resume, not through slavery or trade, but by access to life-saving vaccinations. amazingly, more than 50 million vaccines have been administered in britain thanks to the tireless work of nhS staff. Conversely, many poorer countries, such as Chad, haiti and tanzania, are yet to receive a single dose. across the world, we have the expertise we need to respond to this pandemic effectively, but the international response has been hampered by a lack of shared global humanity. What will it take to make people and leaders see each other as primarily fellow humans in need rather than solely citizens of a nation? that is the key question we must address to tackle Covid effectively. however, this is about more than charitable foreign aid. the number of variants have continued to rise, and the greater the prevalence of Covid, the higher the risk of more mutations. It is difficult to keep variants contained and in a very short time they can spread across the globe, including to britain. We don’t know if current vaccines will protect us from possible future variants, with the worst-case scenario putting us all back at square one. boosters have a role to play in the future, but right now, for all our sakes, global vaccine equity must be our collective first priority.