The global immunity of the herd is out of reach due to the inequitable distribution of vaccines: 99% of people in poor countries are not vaccinated

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Jon the race between infection and injection, the injection is lost.

Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world 7.9 billion people must be completely vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the world’s population had been completely vaccinated, almost all in rich countries.

Not more 0.9% of the population of low-income countries has received at least one dose.

I am a scholar in global health specializing in health inequalities. Using a vaccine distribution data set compiled by the Launch and scale speedometer from the Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University In the United States, I analyzed what the global vaccine access gap means to the world.

A global health crisis

Supply is not the main reason why some countries are able to vaccinate their populations while others experience outbreaks of serious diseases. distribution is.

Many rich countries followed a strategy of overdose of COVID-19 vaccine doses in advance. My analyzes show that the US, for example, has obtained 1.2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine, or 3.7 doses per person. Canada has ordered 381 million doses; all Canadians could be vaccinated five times with the required doses.

In general, countries representing only one-seventh of the world’s population had reserved more than half of all available vaccines by June 2021. This has made it difficult for other countries to acquire doses, either directly or through COVAX, the global initiative created to allow low- to middle-income countries equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Benin, for example, has obtained about 203,000 doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine, enough to completely vaccinate 1% of its population. Honduras, based primarily on AstraZeneca, has obtained approximately 1.4 million doses. This will completely vaccinate 7% of its population. In these “vaccine deserts,” even front-line health workers are not yet inoculated.

Haiti has received about 461,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine through donations and it is with a severe outbreak.

Even COVAX’s goal: that lower-income countries “they receive enough doses to vaccinate up to 20% of their population”- would not control COVID-19 transmission on these sites.

The cost of not cooperating

Last year, researchers at Northeastern University modeled two vaccine deployment strategies. Their numerical simulations found that 61% of deaths worldwide would have been prevented if countries cooperated to implement an equitable global vaccine distribution plan, compared to only 33% if high-income countries received vaccines first.

In short, when countries cooperate, The deaths from COVID-19 fall by about half.

Access to vaccines is also unequal in countries, especially in countries where severe inequality already exists.

In Latin America, for example, a disproportionate number of the tiny minority of vaccinated people are elites: political leaders, business tycoons i those with means to travel abroad to be vaccinated. This consolidates wider social and health inequalities.

The result, for now, is of two separate and unequal societies in which only the rich are protected from a devastating disease that continues to ravage those who cannot access the vaccine.

A repetition of the wrong steps of AIDS?

This is a family story from the HIV era.

In the 1990s, an effective antiretroviral drug for HIV / AIDS was developed. saved millions of lives in high-income countries. However, about 90% of the world’s poor live with HIV he had no access to these life-saving drugs.

Pharmaceutical companies that produced antiretrovirals, such as Burroughs Wellcome, adopted internationally consistent prices, concerned about shrinking their markets in high-income countries. Azidotimidine, the first drug to fight HIV, costs approximately $ 8,000 a year – finished $ 19,000 in current dollars.

This effectively placed effective HIV / AIDS drugs out of the reach of people in poor nations, including countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the epicenter of the epidemic. In the year 2000, 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV, and AIDS was the main cause of death in the region.

The crisis over inequitable access to AIDS treatment began to dominate international news headlines and the obligation of the rich world to respond became too great to ignore.

“History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources we can bring to the fight against HIV / AIDS,” he said. South African President Nelson Mandela in 2004.

Pharmaceutical companies began giving antiretrovirals to countries that needed it and allowing local companies to manufacture generic versions. massive and low-cost access for severely affected poor countries. New global institutions such as Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were created to fund health programs in poor countries.

Pressured by grassroots activism, the United States and other high-income countries also spent billions of dollars researching, developing, and distributing affordable HIV treatments worldwide.

A dose of global cooperation

More than a decade passed after the development of antiretrovirals and millions of unnecessary deaths so that rich countries could universally dispose of these life-saving drugs.

Fifteen months after the current pandemic, rich and highly vaccinated countries are beginning to take some responsibility for raising global vaccination rates.

They have recently been leaders in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan pledged to give a total of 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the poorest countries.

It is still unclear how its “vaccinate the world” plan will be implemented by the end of 2022 and whether recipient countries will receive enough doses to completely vaccinate enough people to control viral spread. And the end-2022 target will not save people in the developing world dying from COVID-19 in record numbers now, from Brazil to India.

The HIV / AIDS epidemic shows that ending the coronavirus pandemic will require, first and foremost, prioritizing access to COVID-19 vaccines to the global political agenda. Then, rich countries will have to work with other countries to build their vaccine manufacturing infrastructure, increasing production worldwide.

Finally, poorer countries need more money to fund their public health systems and buy vaccines. Wealthy countries and groups like the G-7 can provide this funding.

These actions also benefit rich countries. As long as the world has unvaccinated populations, COVID-19 will continue to spread and mutate. Additional variants will emerge.

Like a UNICEF Declaration of May 2021 say it: “In our interdependent world no one is safe until everyone is safe.”

Mary of Jesus, Associate Professor and Researcher at the Center for Health, Risk and Society, American University School of International Service

This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.





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