A cry for moral leadership
The new Covid-19 wave makes clear rich countries must do better to ensure global access to life-saving vaccines.
A TRAGEDY of epic scale is unfolding before our eyes as deaths due to Covid-19 soar in poor and lower-income countries.
Those in the rich world are mistaken if we think we can shut out the horror playing out in India and other parts of South Asia, and even nearer to Singapore, in parts of South-East Asia.
We cannot shield ourselves forever from a fast-mutating virus for we live in an interconnected world, and our economy and quality of life are inextricably linked to open borders and the free flow of people, goods and services.
Yes, we must do our best to protect ourselves and our fellow residents on this island by getting vaccinated, wearing masks with good filters and sticking to safe distancing guidelines.
We must also investigate any lapses, whether in policy, at the airport or in hospitals, that contributed to the current wave of community transmissions so that we can do better in future.
But even as we do all these, let us not forget the millions of people who live in countries and regions far poorer than Singapore, and who are now fighting for their lives and the lives of their loved ones as Covid-19 ravages their homeland.
A moral failing
On May 14, The New York Times published an editorial bearing the stark headline, “America is failing its moral test on vaccines”.
Its stirring first paragraph read: “The United States is well on its way to protecting Americans from the coronavirus. It’s time to help the rest of the world. By marshalling this nation’s vast resources to produce and distribute enough vaccines to meet global demand, the United States would act in keeping with the nation’s best traditions and highest aspirations while advancing its geopolitical and economic interests. It is a moment of both obligation and opportunity.”
On May 18, the Financial Times published a commentary by Prof Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, headlined, “Time for other vaccine makers to follow Oxford-Astra-Zeneca’s lead”.
She wrote: “Over a year ago, Oxford university scientists anticipated the potential impact of the emerging coronavirus and believed that they might be able to produce an effective vaccine. The speed with which they were able to do so was due, in part, to 20 years’ worth of work on infectious disease with colleagues in Africa and Asia. Given their experience in the developing world, they knew just how devastating a global pandemic would be in poor countries and what a risk this would pose to the rest of the world.
“Many of their worst fears are coming true. Globally, we may have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic; the death toll could exceed nine million by September. The heartrending scenes from India showing the devastating consequences of Covid-19 pose a challenge to the conscience of the world.”
While the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has come under fire from some quarters, it remains the only vaccine developed with the explicit intent to produce its two-shot dosage at cost, forever, in low- and middle-income countries.
Oxford-AstraZeneca accounts for 98% of the supplies to Covax, the global vaccine-sharing facility co-led by the World Health Organisation, which aims to provide two billion doses of vaccines to the developing world this year.
As for experts in medical ethics, this is what they have to say:
“We should distribute vaccines globally because during global health emergencies, national governments have cross-border responsibilities,” Dr Nancy Jecker of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Dr Aaron Wightman and Dr Douglas Diekema of the Seattle Children’s Hospital and Research Institute, wrote back in February.
In their essay, published in BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, they argued for an ethical framework for the global distribution of Covid19 vaccines.
“Cross-border responsibilities can be defended even on narrowly nationalistic grounds,” they wrote, “since infectious diseases do not respect borders. Failing to contain the spread of disease anywhere potentially puts people everywhere at risk. For example, if it takes years before low- and middle-income countries gain access to vaccines, the Sars-CoV-2 virus could develop strains that render some vaccines ineffective, prolonging the pandemic.
“At a minimum, this suggests that prudent governments have self-interested reasons to release vaccines to other countries after vaccinating those within their borders.”
No nation is an island
In this pandemic, the leaders of some of the world’s wealthiest nations have staged for us a spectacle of squabbling over vaccine supply and delivery, and stockpiling of the same, as well as masks and other protective gear.
Rarely have they shown leadership of the kind needed to mount a global response in this time of urgent need.
As a result, the world has reached what WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus terms “vaccine apartheid”, a phrase that rightly captures how the global community is separating and coming apart.
Richard Javad Heydarian, writing in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, put it in more concrete terms: “The world is facing a tragically bizarre situation where healthy teenagers in downtown Los Angeles or Dubai may end up receiving their Covid19 vaccinations way ahead of besieged doctors and extremely vulnerable elderly people across much of the developing world.
“If the world were an airplane, it seems that only first-class passengers are being given oxygen masks and seat belts. The rest will have to haggle with flight attendants for their share while in the air.”
According to Our World in Data, a project of non-profit organisation Global Change Data Lab, the share of total population that has received at least one vaccine dose as at mid-May stands at over 45% in the United States, over 33% in Singapore, and just over 2% in the Philippines.
The disparity is all the more shocking because the US alone could, if it chose, act to substantially boost vaccine access where it is most needed.
The non-profit advocacy group Public Citizen estimates that a US$25bil (RM103.4bil) US government-wide initiative would produce around eight billion doses of mRNA vaccine, or enough to vaccinate half the planet.
“That’s far less than the trillions that could be lost if the economy contracts further as the pandemic persists,” The New York Times observed in its editorial.
The WHO has called on Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to make shots available to the Covax vaccine-sharing facility earlier than planned, due to a supply shortfall left by Indian export disruptions.
The head of Unicef has asked wealthy G-7 countries, ahead of a summit next month, to donate supplies as an emergency measure, to make up the shortfall estimated at 140 million doses by the end of this month.
“The big problem is a lack of sharing,” said Dr Tedros, the WHO chief. “So the solution is more sharing.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network