National Post ePaper

Third World vaccine woes not our fault

Rupa subramanya

Back in March, the president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, died, very likely due to complications from COVID-19. Ironically, the autocratic ruler of the east African nation had been a staunch COVID-19 denier, refusing to vaccinate his country’s population and instead recommending traditional cures and prayer.

Tanzania is by no means a basket case, nor is it embroiled in civil war, as some other African countries are, and it has a relatively high literacy rate of 77 per cent. Yet, at present, only 1.5 per cent of Tanzanians are fully vaccinated. Their former leader routinely refused offers of vaccine doses for his country, only grudgingly accepting that COVID-19 was a reality shortly before his own death.

No sensible observer would say that Tanzania’s low vaccination rate is due to “global vaccine inequity,” yet many advocates for global social justice would have you believe that the large disparity in vaccination rates around the world is driven by hoarding in the global north, thus making doses unavailable in the global south. The Tanzania case and others like it disprove this simplistic narrative.

The reality is much more complex. There is no doubt that the purchasing power of rich countries makes it easier for them to procure vaccines, yet it is not true that poorer countries don’t have access to vaccines, as they can purchase them at concessional rates from the pharmaceutical companies, or draw from the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility. Rather than a lack of access, much of the disparity in vaccination rates in the developing world results from logistical problems and vaccine hesitancy, sometimes with coupled with outright COVID-19 denial.

Recently, South Africa, which is at the epicentre of the new omicron variant, postponed the delivery of new Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines, as it already had more doses than it could administer, given that vaccine hesitancy has led to a very slow rollout. And this is nothing new, as vaccine hesitancy has been a problem in Africa for many years.

Leadership failure is another important contributor to low vaccination rates in many countries. India is often called the “pharmacy of the world” due to its high pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. It even sent some Indian-manufactured doses of the Astrazeneca to Canada at a time when this country had a shortage. Yet it was woefully unprepared for the menacing delta variant, which ravaged the country in the spring.

Vaccination rates were very low, and the government had more or less abandoned standard COVID-19 safety protocols, making the country fertile ground for the new variant to propagate and then to spread elsewhere in the world. The situation became so dire that India suspended its obligations to provide vaccine doses to COVAX, realizing too late that there was a shortage of vaccines at home, thus preventing it from mitigating the impacts of the second wave.

Leadership failure and vaccine hesitancy stemming from cultural or religious beliefs are hardly unique to the global south. Parts of Europe, especially Austria and Germany, are in the midst of a devastating fourth wave. Austria is the first developed country to fully lock down after the advent of vaccines.

Germany may not be very far behind. Cases are also skyrocketing in Switzerland, though the federal government has so far resisted imposing more stringent rules.

All three of these countries are among the richest in the world, yet they exhibit an unusually high degree of vaccine hesitancy, as demonstrated by their low vaccination rates. The governments of these countries were also reluctant to bar the unvaccinated from restaurants and other public places, as is the norm in Canada, instead allowing patrons to present a negative test until the fourth wave had already broken out.

No one in their right mind would say that the low vaccination rates in Austria and Germany are a result of vaccine inequity. To assume that low rates of vaccination in poor countries must universally reflect their inability to acquire vaccines is not only patronizing, but assumes that people in poor countries are perpetual victims, and all their problems will be solved if countries like Canada abandon the idea of administering boosters and shift all of our vaccine doses to the developing world.

Ironically, analysts from the global south who write about low vaccination rates in the developing world do not typically blame insufficient access to vaccines, but rather point to logistical issues and vaccine hesitancy as the key stumbling blocks.

It would therefore make no sense for Canadians to forgo boosters or vaccinating children in a misguided attempt to free up supplies for the developing world, as some have argued. It is the legal and moral responsibility of every level of government in Canada to look after their own citizens.

It would be great if everyone eligible on the planet opted to get vaccinated as soon as possible, but just as in Canada, there are vaccine-hesitant people in other countries, both rich and poor. It’s simplistic and misleading to reduce the complex reality of differential vaccination rates around the world to the singular cause of inequitable access to vaccine doses.

NOT TRUE THAT POORER COUNTRIES DON’T HAVE ACCESS.

NEWS

en-ca

2021-11-30T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-30T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://nationalpost.pressreader.com/article/281483574659334

Postmedia