Even the reality of a global pandemic that poses an equal threat to rich and poor has not been able to dispel the weight of the weighted privilege associated with the rich / poor divide among nations.
Last week, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Gebreyesus broke the UN’s silence over what, he says, is the skewed nature of the global COVID-19 vaccine distribution regime, describing the process as ” hover up ”from the lion’s share of COVID-19 vaccines from the rich countries. This, Gebreyesus says, may well have set the international community on the threshold of “catastrophic moral failure.”
Using an uncharacteristic level of absurdity of such forums at a meeting at the UN headquarters in Geneva, a senior UN official claimed that a disproportionate number of vaccine doses had been acquired by rich countries. “It’s not right … younger, healthier adults in rich countries are being vaccinated against COVID-19 before older people or healthcare workers in poorer countries.”
Reports stemming from a week-long meeting of the WHO Executive Board indicate that Gebreyesus has skewed vaccine makers for what the WHO considers is targeting ‘profit maximizing’ locations rather than prioritizing patients most in need.
“Only 25 doses have been given in one low-income country – not 25 million, not 25,000 – only 25. I need to be straight-forward. The world is quoted as on the brink of catastrophic moral failure, ”the WHO Director General is quoted as saying. Guinea is said to be the country where he received only twenty-five doses of the vaccine.
News of the WHO Director-General’s explosion comes shortly after reports (published in the January 22 issue of the Stabroek Business) that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) had called for a UN-approved global forum to discuss mechanisms for ensuring level of fairness in the distribution of vaccines. Although countries such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have already announced plans for receiving and storing the vaccines, there has been no word on the anticipated timeline for vaccine reach in the region and the number of doses each country will have receives them.
What would appear to be an emerging debate over the global distribution of the vaccination underscores the band’s frailty that is generally banded around the idea of equality among nations that the cornerstone of UN philosophy.
The WHO Director-General seems to feel that unless the current skim vaccination classification can be quickly disseminated the UN-driven global equality axiom could disappear under a tsunami of ill-feeling of countries which is developing.
Gebreyesus is quoted as saying that although it is “right that all governments want to prioritize vaccination of their own health workers and older people first … it is not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries should be vaccinated before health workers and people older in poorer countries. There will be plenty of vaccine for everyone. ”
However, the resentment of an Ethiopian-born UN official did not stop him paying tribute to the scientific achievement behind the introduction of coronavirus vaccines less than a year after the pandemic exploded in China, where a team backed by WHO is now located to look into the origin of the virus.