Johannesburg – Rich countries are gobbling available vaccines in a move that could see poor and middle-income countries like South Africa failing to vaccinate millions of their vulnerable people, including frontline healthcare workers and the elderly.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has raised concerns that rich countries have weakened Covax, a global alliance of mostly low and middle-income countries that has pooled resources together to buy vaccines at a cheaper price and ensure their equitable distribution to save lives.
In an interview with Sunday World on Friday, Ramaphosa said vaccines were supposed to be distributed on an equitable basis.
“We have been concerned about the vaccine issue because there seems to be sort of a nationalism around vaccines. We wanted to see vaccines as a common good, available on an equitable basis to various countries in the world,” he said.
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“Our concern was obviously based on the fact that your higher-income countries were just buying out everyone. That in itself weakens Covax because Covax is a process in which various countries come together and get a vaccine cheaply on a combined basis. Those countries [rich countries] went and bought.”
The “nationalism” of vaccines has led to a mad rush on the part of poor countries to enter into bilateral talks with individual pharmaceutical companies to secure vaccines after rich countries stockpiled shots for their citizens before clinical tests were completed last year. Experts said doses of vaccines were in short supply in the global market after being booked by rich countries in the European Union and the US, a situation that has led to the World Health Organisation (WHO) calling for bilateral deals of vaccines to stop with immediate effect.
“I urge Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to prioritise supply through Covax. Countries that have contracts for more vaccines than they need should donate them to Covax immediately and stop bilateral deals. Vaccinating equitably saves lives, stabilises health systems and would lead truly to global economic recovery that stimulates job creation,” WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said at the start of the week: “Importantly, it would also help us limit the virus’ opportunity to mutate.” Rich countries pre-booked vaccines before they even went to full clinical trials, said Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a consultant in global health policy and programmes and access to medicines.
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“What is left in the market for developing countries is little. So Covax is not working because the rich countries already booked millions and millions of doses through bilateral deals,” she said. But South Africa- which by admission of the country’s leading adviser on Covid-19 Prof Abdul Karim entered the vaccine race late- has no choice but engage in bilateral talks to secure more doses of the vaccines.
Ramaphosa said the government was considering different sources to fund the procurement of vaccines.
He conceded that his administration was unable to implement another stimulus package with relief measures to help struggling families and businesses ravaged by Covid-19.
“Right now, we don’t have financial resources, that’s the fact of the matter. That is why the measures that we have put in place have been measures that are aimed at not closing down the economy, but measures enabling the economy to continue to operate to a large extent,” he said, noting the country would need R10 to R15-billion to achieve herd immunity.
Ramaphosa, who is also the chairperson of the African Union (AU) said the country’s vaccine procurement strategy was three-pronged: through the Covax facility, a WHO and Gavi Vaccine Alliance initiative to help low and middle income [countries] to access vaccines on a fair and equitable basis; bilateral deals and the AU’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team.
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Oxfam International also warned in December that nine out of 10 people in poor countries were set to miss out on vaccination after wealthier countries such as Canada bought enough doses to vaccinate their entire population three times.
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