Peak representation
If the United Nations was created from the ashes of World War II, what will come from the covid-19 global crisis?Many world leaders at this week’s UN Virtual Summit expect it to be an affordable vaccine for all countries. , rich and poor, but while the United States, China and Russia have chosen not to participate in a collaborative effort to expand and distribute a vaccine, and some rich countries are entering into agreements with pharmaceutical corporations to unload millions of possible doses, a call is probably in vain.
“Should other people die?” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a Covid-19 survivor, said that the way forward is uncertain: more than 150 countries have joined COVAX, where the richest countries agree to buy possible vaccines and help finance access for the poorer. Washington, Beijing and Moscow mean that the reaction to a fitness crisis like no other during the UN’s 75 years is far from global, instead the 3 powers have made mixed promises of percentage of any vaccine they develop, probably after from the first. help their own citizens.
This week’s UN data collection can serve as a call for attention, said Gayle Smith, president of ONE Campaign, a nonprofit organization that fights preventable diseases that develops panels to measure how the world’s toughest nations contribute to vaccine equity. “It is not enough for some G20 countries to realize that a fair vaccine is the key to ending this virus and reopening the world economy,” he said.
With only a few weeks for countries to sign up for COVAX, co-directed through the United Nations World Health Organization, many heads of state are the United Nations assembly as a high-profile opportunity to mock, convince and even shame.
Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, presses on the illusory nature of borders and wealth: “The virus has taught us that we are all in danger and that there is no special coverage for the class or a specific class. “
Palau’s COVID-free Pacific island country president Tommy Remengesau Jr. warned against selfishness: “Vaccine treasure will hurt us all. “And Rwandan President Paul Kagame appealed to the universal will to return to normal: “Ensuring fairness in vaccines, treatments and diagnosis will drive the end of the pandemic for all. “
Two days after nearly two hundred speeches through world leaders, it became clear that the urgent need for a vaccine would be discussed among almost everyone. Given the stunning demanding situations ahead, this is no surprise. “We have never faced a scenario in which 7. 8 Billion people worldwide want a vaccine at about the same time,” said John Nkengasong, director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this month.
This has led to complicated consultations: who will get vaccine doses first, who makes personal agreements to receive them?This week’s speeches make it clear that these problems have an existential meaning. The search for the vaccine should not be a “purely commercial act,” Iraq said. Not even “a question of competition,” Turkey said.
“We will have to eliminate vaccine policy,” Kazakhstan said. “We want a genuine globalization of compassion,” Slovakia said. The Dominican Republic deployed all capital letters in one statement: “We DEMAND that this vaccine be made from the planet. “More gently, Mozambique warned that “nationalism and aisticism in the face of a pandemic are, for us, a recipe for failure. “
Regardless of their reputation at home or on the world stage, leaders are setting up a non-unusual floor as global approaches to the million showed deaths from the pandemic. “The COVID-19 vaccine will have to be considered as a global public good. transparent about that, ” said Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented to the General Assembly pointing out in an interview with the UN media arm: “To think that we can maintain and let the deficient suffer is a stupid mistake. “
It is clear whether the comments of world leaders, delivered in a melee at UN headquarters, but in videos recorded from national capitals, will make all the difference. .
“It is vital that we continue to deliver these speeches, but at the end of the day, speeches will have no effect if there are no genuine measures in a position to ensure that poor countries, and the poorest of the deficient, have access “to the vaccine,” Tfinishai Mafuma said with South Africa-based social justice organization Section 27. It is a component of a coalition that is pushing for more affordable and accessible medicines.
South Africa, like many African countries, is experiencing the fatal consequences of having to wait. Health experts say 12 million Africans have died in the decade it took for HIV drugs to succeed on the continent.
Mafuma’s compatriot, Shabir Madhi, principal investigator of a clinical trial in South Africa of the vaccine that the University of Oxford is deceting with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a little more optimistic. That the world’s largest richest countries have joined COVAX “is promising,” he said. But while this week’s passionate speech at the UN will make a difference, Madhi said, it’s still “hard to say. “