Balkans feel abandoned as vaccinations kick off in Europe
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA » When thousands of people across the European Union began rolling up their sleeves last month to get a coronavirus vaccination shot, one corner of the continent was left behind, feeling isolated and abandoned: the Balkans.
Balkan nations have struggled to get access to COVID-19 vaccines from multiple companies and programs, but most of the nations on Europe’s southeastern periphery are still waiting for their first vaccines to arrive, with no firm timeline for the start of their national inoculation drives.
What is already clear is that Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — home to some 20 million people — will lag far behind the EU’s 27 nations and Britain in efforts to reach herd immunity by quickly vaccinating a large number of their people.
North Macedonian epidemiologist Dragan Danilovski compared the current vaccine situation in the Western Balkans to the inequalities seen during the 1911 sinking of the Titanic.
“The rich have grabbed all the available lifeboats, leaving the less fortunate behind,” Danilovski told broadcaster TV 24.
Such sentiment as the world faces its gravest health crisis in a century has gained traction in the Western Balkans — a term used to identify the Balkan states which want to join but still are not part of the EU. It is actively being stoked by pro-Russian politicians in a region sandwiched between Western
and Russian spheres of influence.
“I felt as if the bottom fell out of my hopes for a return to a normal life,” 50-year-old Belma Djonko said in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, describing the emotional fallout of hearing that thousands of doctors, nurses and the elderly across the EU had received the first doses of a vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech while her war-ravaged country is kept waiting.
Many Balkan nations are pinning their hopes on COVAX, a global vaccine procurement agency set up by the World Health Organization and global charity groups to address rising inequities of vaccine distribution. COVAX has secured deals for several promising COVID-19 vaccines but, for now, it will only cover doses to inoculate 20% of a country’s population.
Alongside other politically unstable post- communist Balkan nations that have long professed their
desire to join the EU but keep failing to fulfil conditions to achieve that goal, Bosnia has reserved vaccines through COVAX and expects to start receiving its first doses in April at the earliest.
That seems like an eternity from now.
“Meanwhile, I must continue depriving my 83-yearold father of the company and love of his grandchildren,” Djonko said, referring to the low-tech but heartbreaking defense against the virus, keeping the elderly isolated from potential sources of infection.
Serbia is the only Western Balkan nation to receive vaccine shots so far, getting deliveries from Pfizer-BioNTech and the Russian- developed Sputnik V vaccine. However, Serbia does not have enough doses to begin mass vaccinations, as only 25,000 shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,400 of the Russian vaccine have arrived.
Serbia’s vaccination program began on Dec. 24,
three days before the EU, when Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received a dose in a bid to increase public trust in the vaccine, as many Balkan governments also struggle to counter a strong antivaccination movement.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, recently agreed upon a 70 million- euro ($86 million) package to help Balkan nations get access to the vaccines, on top of 500 million euros ($616 million) the bloc has already contributed to COVAX.
“Throughout the pandemic, the EU has shown that we treat the Western Balkans as privileged partners,” said EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the Executive Commission, says the EU will have more vaccines than necessary for its residents in 2021 and indicated the bloc could share its extra supplies with the Western Balkans and countries in Africa.