Vaccine collaboration is essential to beat Covid-19
THE GOVERMENT has officially declared that Covid-19 vaccination is now open for the age group between 18-35 years.
This marks an important milestone in the fight against the deadly virus, a mark of relative progress in the drive to reach herd immunity and gradually return to some semblance of normalcy. This aspiration for a return to normalcy seems far-flung without an effective vaccine roll-out plan.
In the last family meeting held by President Cyril Ramaphosa, he strongly emphasised the need for our country to speed up its efforts around vaccine collaboration and the need to manufacture vaccines locally.
South Africa must take a leading role advancing vaccine collaboration, which was a central topic at the SADC meeting held in Malawi in August. The Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Dr Vera Songwe, stressed the need for the continent to produce its own vaccine.
This cannot be done without emphatic emphasis on the need to collaborate as a continent and as a country. A poignant example of this collaboration working is the recent collaboration between Bangladesh and China to co-produce a vaccine. On August 16, Chinese and Bangladeshi representatives met for a vaccine co-production signing ceremony in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is set to start local manufacture of China's Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine, as an agreement on co-production of the Chinese jab was signed via video conference with relevant authorities. This move is in line and in keeping with global thinking around collaboration and the need for a collective effort to address the virus.
One can only hope that our government will consider objective facts when looking for vaccine partners, consider science, not politics.
The reality is that we cannot move progressively to addressing the vaccine distribution equality gap, if we are not pragmatic and progressive about who we partner with to produce and distribute vaccines locally.
This is in line with agreements reached, on Thursday, August 5, at the first meeting of the International Forum for Covid-19 Vaccine Cooperation. At the International Forum,
China vowed to make efforts to provide the world with 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this year and to donate $100 million to Covax to promote global vaccine provision, amid the rampaging Delta variant, that is bringing about more challenges for developing countries to access vaccines.
The international community must work together to ensure accessibility and equity of vaccine distribution in developing countries. However, inequity between rich and poor regions in access to vaccines continues to worsen.