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Getting the whole world vaccinated against covid MUST be a priority. It’s unconscionable that close to zero people in low-income countries have been vaccinated so far. This is important to absolutely everybody for three reasons...
...1) The ethics of only vaccinating a quarter of the planet should be unthinkable to us. 2) For many reasons, we will have vulnerable people who are not protected by the vaccine, now and in the future. These people will be at risk on an ongoing basis from imported cases if...
...the virus continues to circulate globally. 3) The longer the virus thrives, the higher the chance of mutations, which could make any vaccine less effective or ineffective....
...There has been a lot of chat lately around “we should give leftover vaccines to LICs” after we’re finished our rollouts in the west. Most chat seems to be about donating vials. This is well intentioned and supply is DEFINITELY a problem. But we need to push politicians...
...to do much more. While public health doctors talking about health infrastructure is boring as balls, just donating vaccines to LICs won’t result in good coverage. I’ve been involved in vaccination programmes in Africa and Asia and here are the kinds of barriers I’ve seen...
....A) Insufficient community engagement-I saw a whole community susceptible to disease because they were told their vaccines were impregnated with lifelong contraceptives because the west was trying to reduce their birth rates. B) No electricity to power simple vaccine fridges..
..colleagues in aid agencies estimate that there needs to be an extra 200,000 fridges + electricity to power them in sub-saharan Africa just to keep up with non-covid vaccination. C) No physical access to vaccines for people because there was no diesel to deliver the vaccines...
..or regions were cut off by flooding or there was too much civil unrest for healthcare workers to safety vaccinate the people. I’ve seen enough awful deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses in LICs to know that the existence of a vaccine doesn’t mean access to a vaccine...
...The solutions are complex and take time. It’s not about leftover vaccines. The golden rule of pandemics is that you need to go earlier+harder than you think. We need to put serious effort into helping low and middle income countries strengthen their vaccine infrastructure...
...Please believe me-throwing money and vaccines at this problem isn’t enough. We need to really engage at a political level with people like @gavi @UNICEF @SaveUKNews We need to take as much interest in the vaccine delivery plans of LICs as we do in our own plans....
...We’re not safe until were all safe. And we’re not all going to be safe if we delay much longer. Make this a doorstep issue for your politicians.
