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Photo credit: afp.com/Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA
The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regional Health Agency said 260 people, including around 100 college students, were vaccinated against Covid-19 with doses that expired during the month of September. Vaccines thawed on August 6 should have been given within 31 days of thawing, but were given between September 7 and 21.
The error would be due to a defect in the marking of the thawing date on the batch. A human error which illustrates the pressure to which health professionals are subjected in a context of the breakdown of the public hospital.
If this error does not present a risk to health, according to the National Medicines Safety Agency, it illustrates the dysfunctions of the public hospital and more generally of the health system, linked to a lack of resources, and to professionals. health workers. Even if the government has taken all the necessary steps to vaccinate the population, chronic understaffing remains a reality in the health sector, with dramatic consequences. This event raises more broadly the question of the management of vaccination in a context where millions of doses are wasted, especially by rich countries.
When some countries are vaccinated at less than 1%, millions of doses are wasted
Access to vaccination does not escape the rules of deeply unequal capitalist competition. While some regions have extremely low vaccination rates such as in Africa, where less than 5% of the population has a complete immunization cycle, millions of doses of vaccine are thrown away in other countries. This is particularly the case of the USA which according to the NBC website have thrown nearly 15 million doses since March, out of 444 million doses distributed. If the causes of these losses are multiple, they are mainly due to the fact that the imperialist powers were able to afford to buy surplus doses, to the detriment of other countries. At United Kingdom for example, nearly seven doses per capita have been planned. If these rich countries plan hypocritically in theory to redistribute these doses to other countries, the implementation is often incomplete, if not impossible; and this situation vividly illustrates the deeply unequal means between countries in access to vaccines and vaccine imperialism.
This deeply unequal distribution of vaccine doses, and this enormous waste of doses, illustrates the contempt of the governments of imperialist countries for the lives of millions of people. While the pandemic is not over, it is necessary to guarantee universal access to vaccination, by requiring the lifting of patents on vaccines and their mass production. While the health personnel, on the front line during the pandemic, suffered from criminal cases in the public hospital, it is also necessary to demand the means allowing them to carry out their work in the best conditions.
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