Skip to main content

Vaccine nationalism: Will humanity lose the race?

Our vocabulary has been enriched in 2020. In first half of this year we went through 'quarantine', 'lockdown', 'plasma therapy' like words and now in second half we are encountering the words like 'herd immunity', ' clinical trial', 'corona vaccine' etc. In these 2020 dictionary one more word should be added and that is 'vaccine nationalism'.

Courtesy: Jakarata Post

This word is neither patriotic nor scientific. It is a straight indicator of a race towards vaccine. World is waiting for the antidote of this global pandemic and the vaccine is considered as a solution of this problem atleast. In the beginning of 2020 when corona virus has started spreading all over the world, every country was confused and trying to get help globally. Such countries started talking on helping hand philosophy and what else you can do when you're helpless? But silently developed countries put another hand on vaccine development.


Scientists from all over the world joined to search the new vaccine for the novel virus and the spreading capacity of this virus lead them to speed up this process. At the same time, governments of developed countries began working on back-room deals to lock in their access to these vaccines ahead of anyone else. The selfishness to occupy all of the new vaccine doses for own population first leaving behind the other countries is called 'vaccine nationalism'.  


So what's wrong? If I have enough sources or money, why can't I buy vaccine for my people in advance? Definitely, it's a first impression in our minds. You don't know the mechanism and doses required for the population of your country and you are pre-purchasing more than you need will create a shortage all over the world. The US, the UK, France, Canada, and Russia have already entered into multi-million-dollar agreements with vaccine producers even before the final trial phase is over. Corona virus can be only neutralised from the world if 70% of global population get the vaccine and the condition is vaccine should be 90 to 95% effective. But most of world's population are occupied by developing and poor countries. So in this scenario they have to wait for a long time to receive the corona vaccine and other side developed countries will make an excess of novel vaccine for its population safety purpose. This may lead the pandemic lasting longer. Hoarding of novel vaccine may also hike the price and ultimately it will be available to other countries at very high cost. That's not the true humanity in such pandemic. It is against the global public health principles. There are no provisions in international laws to prevent this pre-purchase aggrements.


It's not first time when this nationalism on vaccine distribution created the global threat. Anti-retroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV patients were unavailable in Africa, the worst affected region, for several years after being developed in the 1990s. Africa was the origin of HIV and kept away from the life saving drugs for years. That shows the intentions of the developed countries. 


Though WHO can't overcome these contractual obligations due to lack of international laws, WHO took an initiative for the even distribution of the corona vaccine. WHO’s fair access mechanism called COVAX Global Vaccines Facility would be the ‘fastest way to end the pandemic’. WHO appealed the mighty countries to join COVAX and many big countries including China has joined it. 


WHO seeks to achieve this by ensuring that all participating countries will be provided supplies to cover at least 20% of their high risk populations, at fair uniform price. Member countries will share their production to the other needy countries and the countries which aren't able to get the vaccine on itself will get benefit from it. 


The very first polio vaccine was introduced in 1950, but until 1964 the vaccine became available in India. And now India is polio free and almost distributer of the 60% vaccine stock to the developing countries all over the world. At that time vaccine nationalism by developed countries had made India 'Aatmanirbhar' very early for vaccine production. WHO and the whole world know that there is no possibility to provide vaccine to the whole world in short time without help of India, the largest manufacturer and global pharma hub. That's why WHO is talking for a month with India to participate in COVAX though India is still thinking on it. World's big pharma names also want to collaborate with India because even if they invent the new vaccine, they ain't eligible for mass production in shorter time span.


The Serum Institute of India in Pune, has an agreement to manufacture one billion doses of coronavirus vaccine being developed by scientists at the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca if it is approved for use. The world’s largest vaccine manufacturer — Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) — also said that it will be 2024 before the world can produce enough vaccines for everyone.


So, even if a citizen from the US or any other high-income countries has been vaccinated by next year, we do not know if they will remain immune till 2024, by which time they are likely to come in contact with someone who has not yet received the shot. Until and unless all countries are able to achieve herd immunity, vaccination doesn’t guarantee a safe seat for anyone, anywhere.


India is a generous country and will definitely join the COVAX or make an alternate way to provide its manufacturing power to the developing countries. India has power to fullfill own requirements simultaneously. The example of Hydroxychloroquine exportation shows that India has ultimate production power to supply the essentials to the world. We may on third or fourth position in the world for the development of novel corona vaccine, but we will definitely on top when it will be time to relieve the grief of humanity.


The world has no Amazing Spiderman or Krrish who can spread antidote in a single night to vaccinate the mass population but world has India which can make it nearly possible.


Final Funda: India isn't on top to file patents to encash the profit and credit but India is definately on top of the world when it's time to show the humanity.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The horror show with antibiotic resistance

Nowadays antibiotics are the crucial medicines among all the drugs. All are oversmart enough to consume Azithromycin when sore throat or AmoxyClav when wound with pus or Clindamycin ointment for acne. But they don't know what these mighty molecules are going to be done with the future. All the infections may not require higher antibiotics. Sometimes infection may be due to virus. Here antibiotics are useless or I would say harmful. Antibiotic resistance will be a new disaster before global warming if we don't care. Can you imagine the scenario when your children will be suffering from fever and the medications will not be working for them? Can you imagine the situation of ICUs where all the heroic antibiotics may lose their ability? Can you imagine the era when a surgery will be near to impossible? Yes, we are entering into the era of superbugs. Superbugs will be the new challenge of mankind to survive. As Charles Darvin said everybody has right to survive and thes...

Is traditional pharmacy still superior than online pharmacy?

  The most important luxury developed by human in 21st century is home delivery of anything. A man has evolved a lot but at the same time he is going into the idle state of lifestyle. Though it's a good thing actually to make the life easier, it can't be true for all of the products we use. Especially the things which deals with human life can't be ignored easily. It is the coolesst thing nowadays to order online. In metro and mega cities the culture is developed already to the food dishes and now it's entering into the small towns too. It's not a hazardous thing to stop someone using online delivery services. But when it's a matter of medicine, It surely needs some attention. Over the years, the way people purchase medicines has evolved significantly. The advent of technology has given birth to the concept of online pharmacies, which has revolutionized the traditional pharmacy industry. Online pharmacies, also known as e-pharmacies, allow customers to order med...

Are Diabetes and Hypertension overrated?

A man aged 45 was taken to the hospital. The reason was just fall down due to vertigo. It wasn't his first time. Seldom such events were found in the history. The reason could be any serious thing but actually it was pretty simple. He was on antidiabetic medicines for last 6 months. The medicine was started just after two readings of fingertip sugar within 3 days on different time frame after and before lunch. Was it enough data to diagnose a giant one? Actually the diabetic readings were just temporary. Medications worked wrong for him and hypoglycemic shock was the reason of his fainting. Just some sugar cubes or a chocolate could be the treatment of that time for the conscious patient otherwise you just had to drip in plain dextrose infusion. World is suffering from non communicable diseases (NCD) widely. Lifestyle is the key substance behind this ' NCDemic '. Cancer, hyper or hypothyrodism, obesity, hypertension, diabetes etc are the well-known players of this team. Bu...

Why is rural India suffering from doctor deficiency?

  We are moving towards the development. Indian people have changed their lifestyles rapidly in last decade. Our urban and metro areas are filled with luxurious lifestyle and at the same time villages are shrinking day by day. The only reason is the lack of the speed of development. Rapidly the cities are growing but the same thing and pace doesn't apply to the rural areas. That's why lots of inconvenience stops the people to spend whole life in village especially public servants. If public servants don't want to stay here, how will be the development of rural areas possible?   We can figure out other rural problems slowly but we can't neglect the health services. To the last person health is the most serious and necessary service for the survival and healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately we are still a little slow on it. Ayushyman Bharat Yojana tried to patch this void space but a lot of things need to be done rapidly. Almost on every 1 lac population there should be a Comm...