Covid-19 has caused devastation all over the world, claiming the lives of millions of people. Several types of immunizations have been created to battle the infection and save lives. Despite the fact that vaccines have been accessible for a while now, many countries are still unable to vaccinate their citizens with a single dosage, whereas rich countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Israel have immunized roughly half of their citizens. It is “vaccine nationalism” that is at the root of this difference.
Vaccine nationalism occurs when a country prioritizes the vaccination of its inhabitants by purchasing vaccines in the early stages of clinical development, even before they are commercially available. Developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada received enough vaccines to vaccinate their citizens multiple times over. The vaccination rates in impoverished and wealthy countries continue to be vastly different.
Despite the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the COVAX program to provide immunizations to poorer parts of the world, Africa, which has a population of 1.3 billion people, is experiencing a one-billion-dose vaccine deficit. It has received vaccines capable of inoculating only 2% of its people. The vaccine inequality is so great that countries with only 14% of the world's population are getting the majority of the vaccines -- having received over 50% of all the vaccines manufactured.
We've seen nationalistic conduct before, as well as its negative consequences. The H1N1 virus, popularly known as Swine Flu, claimed the lives of up to 284,000 individuals globally in 2009. A vaccine was created in seven months, but most high-income countries relied on domestic pharmaceutical businesses to manufacture it.
High-income countries negotiated big advance orders for the vaccine directly, thus excluding low-income countries. Although several of those wealthy nations, like the United States, consented to donate vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, they only did so after ensuring that their own people were covered first.
As a result, the H1N1 vaccination was distributed based on the purchasing capacity of high-income countries rather than the danger of transmission.
"Affordable, non-discriminatory access to the vaccine is a human right," the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated in one of its pronouncements. Denying vaccination to poor countries is a clear violation of the right to health, which is a cornerstone of international human rights.
The right to health is recognized as a fundamental right under Articles 25 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The preamble of the World Health Organization's constitution also states this. Every individual has the right to "the best possible quality of bodily and mental health," according to Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
It also urges the state parties to participate in this process. The right to health is inextricably linked to universal immunization. Furthermore, the right to life is enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), the treaty body in charge of implementing the ICCPR, has issued General Comment No 36, which urges nations to take immediate steps to ensure that people have access to life-saving medications and basic health care. The World Health Organization's Director-General, Tedros Adhanom, has referred to the gap in immunizations between rich and poor countries as "vaccine apartheid," in which countries are denied vaccines depending on their financial status and political strength.
Vaccine nationalism can result in a variety of undesirable consequences. This form of vaccine procurement by affluent countries is not only a violation of international human rights, but it also endangers the entire human population. Only vaccinating people in wealthy countries will never be enough to stop a pandemic from spreading. This will only serve to prolong the pandemic, resulting in more economic losses and more human deaths.
The only way to stop the pandemic from spreading is to find an effective means of providing vaccine doses to the whole human population, without discrimination based on financial or political resources.
Sajib Hossain and Aruna Bala are students of law.
