To be safe, the world needs a more equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan
Do you remember the Ebola scare?
In March 2014, Mosoka Fallah, with a PhD in immunology from the University of Kentucky, returned to his poor home community in Liberia to open the maternal health clinic he had started to build, concrete block by concrete block, with money from his graduate assistantship.
Then Ebola happened. During the height of the outbreak, in September 2014, Dr. Fallah’s picture appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times heading an article about his work as a bridge, building trust between poor neighborhoods and the Health Ministry and international organizations. He was named one of Time magazine’s 2014 Persons of the Year.
Currently, Dr. Fallah is the Principal Investigator in Liberia of several NIH-sponsored studies on Ebola, including a natural history study of the largest cohort of Ebola survivors in the world, and a part-time faculty member at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Social Medicine. He recently served as Director General for Liberia’s National Public Health Institute.
Dr. Fallah and other Africans were involved in clinical trials for a vaccine. In Liberia, 1,500 individuals participated. In early January of this year came the announcement that a global Ebola vaccine stockpile had been established. When an Ebola outbreak occurred anywhere in the world, the vaccine could get there as quickly as 48 hours. Colleagues in African countries, in Europe, the US, MERCK, WHO, UNICEF, and Medicine San Frontier had worked together for the global good through an International Coordinating Group (ICG).
In contrast, working for the global good has not happened with COVID-19 vaccines. In a Jan. 21 essay, Dr. Fallah wrote: “My hope for an equitable distribution of the approved COVID-19 vaccines to end this nightmare was shattered with I read that the mechanisms initiated for the Ebola vaccine would not be repeated for these COVID-19 vaccines.”
Several days earlier, WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeyesus, called the world’s vaccine effort a “catastrophic moral failure” and said “it’s not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are vaccinated before health workers and older people in poorer countries.” At a time when 39 million doses had been administered in wealthier nations, 25 doses – that is 25 doses – had been administered in one country on the African continent, Guinea.
In a Jan. 26 opinion piece for NPR, Nigerian Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor writes that “vaccine nationalism is making Africa the weakest link despite the continent deploying a better public health response to the pandemic than many of these richer Western nations,” and “the selfish behavior by richer countries makes me wonder about the kind of future that my two daughters, now ages 11 and 8, would inherit as Africans. As a dad, I want my daughter to inherit a more equitable world – one that lifts and empowers the weak. If my daughters were to ask me what is happening with the vaccine, I would have to tell them that richer Western nations are acting like ostriches, burying their heads in the sand.”
According to Duke University’s Global Health Institute, richer countries that are home to 16 percent of the world’s population have bought or reserved 60 percent of vaccine supplies. Canada has negotiated deals to buy 400 million doses of vaccine, enough to vaccinate its population five times over.
Do we care?
Do we understand that this is a worldwide pandemic? Do we understand that we will not be safe anywhere in the world until we are safe everywhere? Do we understand that equity in access matters? Why am I getting the vaccine before Dr. Fallah and before Dr. Nsofor?
Angene Wilson was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia (1962-64) and has also lived in Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Fiji.