South Africa, after the initial difficulties to obtain sufficient vaccine for its population, despite the fact that everything manages the COVID-19 vaccine to many thousands of citizens.
Audie Cornish, host:
South Africa’s CoVVI-19 vaccination program is showing signs of success. The country is now vaccinating everyone over the age of 18. But it has been tumultuous and shows a global market for vaccines affected through greed and non-public interest. The Eyder Peralta reports from NPR.
(Crosstalk)
Eyder Peralta, Byline: People who wait for vaccination sit in church banks that face the altar. Florencia Berger is the nurse in the center rate. She says that other people are mixing, Pew To Pew, even if they are vaccinated.
Florence Berger: people like musical chairs.
Peralta: Then, as, in the banks.
Pastor: Yes, yes.
Peralta: This middle vaccination used dozens; Now are hundreds.
Pastor: I tell you that, in beyond two months, we have noticed a main increase. And we were more than 400.
Peralta: South Africa has reached its step, a few days, vaccinating more than 200,000 people, representing part of the doses of sub -Saharan Africa. But getting to this point was difficult. When starting with this pandemic, South Africa enrolled in COVAX, the global effort to supply vaccines to poor countries. But they discovered that the vaccine they received, Astrazeneca, opposed the dominant variant in South Africa. Mark van der Heever, government spokesman, says they had facilities, had nurses, but were not vaccines.
Mark van der Heever: We were in a position to start administering, but we don’t perceive it.
Peralta: After that, South Africa began manufacturing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, for rejecting millions of doses due to the ingredients infected in the United States, although everything took out the factory vaccines, but the president had to interfere to save him those doses of being exported to Europe. South Africa has been able to download vaccines through Jostling. They ask for donations. They have completed agreements to download vaccines in exchange for courses examined. At one point, they agreed to pay twice what European countries paid.
Van der Heever: Is and desire, if we can say, is to move on to the immunity of the population around November of December 2021.
Peralta: South Africa is now the good fortune of the continent, hoping that most of its population has been vaccinated until the end of the year. But the maximum countries here in sub -Saharan Africa have vaccinated less than 3% of their people. And the productive maximum instances is that 20% or 30% of their populations will be vaccinated until the end of 2022. He tried to be different.
Mosoka Fallah: I is too naive. I am very naive.
Peralta: Es Mosoka Fallah, who is the scientific leader of the National Institute of Public Health in Liberia and who also worked in the country for the Ebola epidemic.
Fallah: And the explanation why I am naive is that I worried about the paintings with Ebola vaccines.
Peralta: just before the arrival of Covid, African countries had worked with the Pharmaceutical Giant Merck to prevent some other Ebola epidemic an experimental vaccine. They even worked in combination to create a global inventory of the Ebola vaccine. Then, when Cavid-19 hit, Fallah idea that the Global resumed where he had foreseen. Instead, rich countries have begun to buy production materials. They bought the doses that their populations several times needed. And the global initiative to supply a vaccine to the poorest nations collapsed when India was attacked through the Delta variant and has avoided shipping. As you can see Fallah, greed and autoinexo have won.
Fallah: countries are motivated through so much interest in the excessive that the geography of an individual determines whether it lives or dies.
Peralta: on the vaccination site, I Esther Plaatjies. She sits in one of the church banks. She holds her vaccination card with a massive smile. He is 70 years old with central problems. He took two months to get an appointment for his first blow. Now that she is completely vaccinated, she says, she feels blessed.
Esther Plaatjies: I am blessed and I am sure because there are many other people who do not and who are afraid (pH).
Peralta: I ask what other people in the United States who can transmit to any pharmacy to receive a blow and have not worried.
Platejies: I think they are stupid. They, I think they are blessed. And those who do not take it, I think they are very irresponsible.
Peralta: Maybe, think, they just don’t know how intelligent they have.
Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Cape Town, South Africa.
(Soundbite of Little Children Song, “another day”)