Africa’s uphill battle to secure COVID-19 vaccine
Africa's uphill battle to secure COVID-19 vaccine
As news of a COVID-19 vaccine broke at the end of last year, it brought great hope to many across the globe. However, for others it signaled the beginning of a new wave of problems.
At the annual Paris Peace Forum, held in November 2020, panelist Mo Ibrahim (founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, a governance and leadership in Africa organization) voiced his concerns over the accessibility of a vaccine in Africa. Major concerns were linked to the possible nationalization of a vaccine, access and funding, and the continent’s capacities to facilitate large quantities of a vaccine (Surget & Tsoukala-Steggell, 2020).
Further reports warned of the dangers of Africa not having access to a COVID-19 vaccine. Also, in November 2020, Dr. John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), commented that failure to access vaccines would not only lead to thousands more deaths, but the impact will also create economic downfalls as a consequence of trade and movement disruption. He added, “I have seen how Africa is neglected when drugs are available,” and that the effect of travel restrictions for non-vaccinated populations will be “extremely dangerous” (Lawal, 2020).
Cases
As predicted, since the rollout of vaccinations started and continues in nations across the world, Africa is being left behind. With the COVID infection rate increasing across the continent, the urgency to begin the vaccine rollout is growing too.
Currently, there is an upward trend of coronavirus cases across Africa, which is being attributed to the emergence of a new variant of the disease, as believed by experts (Mwai, 2021).
The number of coronavirus deaths is currently 88,993 across the continent, with over 3.5 million recorded cases so far. South Africa is the worst affected nation, with 1.44 million cases, and 43,105 deaths (CDC, 2021). Even though these figures are high, irregular levels of testing between regions and limitations in testing for certain variants mean that the numbers shown may not be accurately depicting the scale of the virus across the continent (Mwai, 2021).
An uphill battle
One of the first hurdles Africa faces is securing funding to be able to access the vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) led Gavi COVID-19 Vaccines Advance Market Commitment (COVAX) is currently enabling low and middle-income countries to receive donor-funded doses of vaccines (Berkley, 2020). Of the two billion secured doses, 690 million are set to be distributed to lower-income African countries (McSweeney and Chingono, 2021).
Whilst COVAX will be able to provide some of Africa’s population with vaccinations, the current number of secured doses will only be enough to vaccinate 27% (McSweeney & Chingono) of the continent’s large 1.2 billion population (Dyer, 2021). This leaves the remaining doses to be acquired by other means, predominantly through government funding.
Article by
Costadina Tsoukala-Steggell
Categories
Africa, Categories, Countries, Economy, Equality, Health, Human rights, News