In July, the Centre d'Action Laïque de Liège invited us to write an opinion piece on the global apartheid of vaccination. Our policy officer Jasper took to his pen to rap the knuckles of the European Commission. The article was published at the end of July in Salut & Fraternité magazine.
More than a year ago, Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, made a statement full of hope. The vaccine would become our universal common good, available throughout the world. «With our global approach, we will make history together», she added. A few months after the start of the first vaccination campaigns, these words ring excessively hollow. Rich countries are vaccinating one person every second, while the future looks very uncertain for most of the world's population. The current global vaccination strategy is failing on all fronts and could come back to haunt us. What about this «global approach» that Ms Von Der Leyen spoke so lyrically about in 2020?
If you're lucky enough to live in a wealthy country, you've probably already had your first injection or are about to. In many low-income countries, however, even nurses and vulnerable groups are still waiting for their first dose. In Florida, more people had already been vaccinated by May than in the whole of Africa. At best, many countries will barely manage to vaccinate one person in ten this year. This means that if nothing changes quickly, it will take years to achieve the global immunity that would put an end to the pandemic.
Despite their fine promises, the rich countries have monopolised the available supply of vaccines before it can be distributed equitably. A small group of countries, representing just 14% of the world's population, have reserved 53% of all vaccines for themselves. In the European Union, we will be able to offer three vaccines to every citizen by the end of 2021. Meanwhile, these same countries are sabotaging a major proposal of the World Trade Organisation to increase global vaccine production. In so doing, the rich countries are in effect telling the world that they are putting the profits of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of a rapid solution to the pandemic.
We will not stop this crisis by vaccinating only the population of rich countries. The pandemic is by definition a global problem, and as long as the coronavirus is rampant in certain countries, even countries with high vaccination coverage are vulnerable. The statement by UN boss António Guterres that “no one is safe until everyone is safe” is not an empty slogan but a warning based on scientific data. Vaccination nationalism is bad for health and bad for our economy. Scientists predict twice as many deaths and an economic cost of 9,000 billion dollars. So the question is, which side of history does Mrs Von der Leyen want to be on? It's high time the EU changed its tune and joined the call to make vaccines a global public good. This is not only the most effective solution, it is also the fairest.
