On December 31, the international community will put an end to the COVAX vaccine distribution program, an unprecedented plan that distributed 2 billion doses mainly to developing countries and with which it is estimated that 2.7 million deaths from covid were avoided. 19 on the entire planet.
Sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the GAVI Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the COVAX program was designed to universalize the new vaccines that have emerged against covid-19 and prevent them from being only administered in the richest countries.
Under the motto “no one will be safe until everyone is safe”, repeated ad nauseam by the leaders of these organizations, the program achieved that the vaccination rate against covid in the poorest economies has currently reached 57%. only slightly lower than the global average of 67%.
“We knew that market forces were not going to distribute vaccines equitably, so the creation of COVAX gave millions of people around the world access to them,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyersus.
Born with vaccines still in clinical trial
Launched in mid-2020, even before the world’s first anti-Covid vaccines were inoculated at the end of that year, COVAX created a distribution network according to which developed countries could donate surpluses, middle-income countries could obtain them at reduced prices, and 92 economies considered low-income according to UN scales would have them for free.
Many of the economies in that last group were from the African continent (Ghana and Ivory Coast were the first countries to receive COVAX vaccines, in March 2021), but there were also beneficiaries of this type in Latin America, specifically Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
“We can be collectively proud of this great and historic achievement, which guaranteed the future of millions of children in vulnerable communities,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
Although COVAX did not completely end the vaccination inequality between rich and poor countries, it did contribute to alleviating it, distributing three out of every four doses to lower-income countries during the pandemic.
It was also possible that the first anti-Covid vaccines in poor countries were administered just 40 days after the first vaccinations were carried out in a developed country (the first to receive them was a 90-year-old British woman, in December 2020).
“A total of 190 economies signed agreements to participate in COVAX, making it one of the most successful multilateral partnerships of this century,” the participating organizations said in a joint statement at the end of the program.
An obstacle course
Not all were successes, however, and there were countries that complained about the slowness of shipments or the differentiated conditions depending on the income level of the beneficiary country: recently, for example, the Government of Paraguay protested its operation and even He was in favor of ceasing to be part of COVAX.
Furthermore, bottlenecks in vaccine production, export bans and other barriers that persisted especially in the first two years of the pandemic meant that distribution through COVAX was not truly massive until the second half of 2021. .
Although COVAX is officially ending, the distribution of anti-Covid vaccines in developing countries will continue through the GAVI Vaccine Alliance at least between 2024 and 2025, with 83 million doses already requested by 58 countries.
“We are transitioning to regular GAVI programs, but we do so with gratitude for the passion, dedication and sacrifice of many around the world who fought tirelessly for three years to create a more equitable world,” stressed the former president of GAVI. the European Commission José Manuel Durao Baroso, current head of the board of directors at the Vaccine Alliance.
Antonio Broto – EFE
2023-12-29 17:34:00
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