From vaccine apartheid to dumping

This week the United States embassy in Juba, South Sudan, announced the arrival of 336 000 doses of the Johnson&Johnson (J&J) Covid-19 vaccine from the US via the Covax facility. The embassy spokesman tweeted: “These vaccines will save lives in South Sudan as we fight the spread of Covid-19 together.”

On Wednesday this week, Nigeria destroyed more than a million doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines in a bid to assure a wary public that they have been taken out of circulation. The destruction came more than a week after health authorities said some Covid-19 doses donated by rich Western nations had a shelf life that left only weeks to administer the jabs.

The Global North, as the Western world is known, has continued to be castigated for what has been aptly described as “vaccine apartheid”. This describes the vaccine inequality resulting from developed countries using their financial muscle to buy and hoard vaccines for their own use to the exclusion of poor countries.

It has been reported that these Western countries are holding on to up-to-three times more vaccines than they need. This is now apparent in the “boosting of boosters” campaign where their citizens are getting up to four jabs, while in poor countries the majority has not had access to a single dose of these life-saving medicines.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres described as disgraceful this state of vaccine inequality, calling it “a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity”. World Health Organisation head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said of the obscenity: “I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers.”

The arrival of the J&J vaccines in Juba is a red flag. It is common knowledge that this particular vaccine has been banned in the West. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention advised that J&J jabs should be suspended since they have scientifically been linked to a rare condition that causes blood clotting.

According to a New York Times report, an expert panel effectively discouraged vaccine providers and adults from using J&J’s shot because data showed that there was a higher risk for the blood clotting condition than previously known.

The risk was greatest among women 30 to 49, estimated at one in 100 000 who had received the company’s shot. The blood clotting disorder has already been linked to dozens of cases and at least nine deaths in the US in the past year.

So why send J&J jabs to South Sudan?

We all know that vaccine uptake in rich countries has not been 100%. In most Western countries up to 40% of citizens have simply refused to be vaccinated. What this means is that millions and millions of doses are lying idle in warehouses.

It is also known that Western vaccines are notoriously difficult to store, some requiring temperatures of up -70°C. Both the J&J and the AstraZeneca vaccine, for example, should be stored in cold chain conditions of +2°C to +8°C for a maximum of six months. Not only is it not suitable for distribution in Africa and most poor countries where such temperatures are difficult to achieve, let alone sustain. These countries also have very poor infrastructure meaning these drugs cannot be moved quickly enough to their remote areas where the majority Africans live.

After disgracefully hoarding vaccines, now the West is cynically dumping rejected and expired drugs on Africa, perpetuating their racist attitude towards the continent.

Africa should be wary of the possibility of Covax turning into a conduit for dumping dangerous drugs on the continent.