Jakarta, CNN Indonesia –
Disease experts encourage providing equal access to corona vaccine if you want the pandemic to end quickly. This was revealed by Olivier Wouters, a disease expert from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), English after seeing the practice of large-scale vaccine stockpiling in rich countries which will only make things worse.
Wouters said even distribution of vaccines should be a priority scale especially for getting vaccines to low and middle-income countries before vaccine stocks dwindle in the next few years.
“The stark reality is that the world now needs more doses of the Covid-19 vaccine than any other vaccine in history to immunize enough people to achieve global vaccine immunity,” said Wouters. AFP, Saturday (13/2).
“If vaccines are not distributed more equitably, it may take years before the coronavirus can be controlled at the global level,” continued Wouters.
He revealed that until now, there were still many low-income countries that had difficulty getting access to the covid-19 vaccine. In fact, there are already more than two dozen covid-19 vaccines, both vaccines in development and approved for use.
This, continued Woulters, was caused by several things ranging from a lack of funds to buy vaccines, to adequate infrastructure to transport and store vaccines that require special handling. Especially mRNA vaccines, which must be stored in a very cold place during delivery.
Meanwhile, the global covid-19 vaccine initiative or COVAX, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), has prioritized provision for developing countries which still faces a number of obstacles. COVAX requires an additional US $ 6.8 billion to secure vaccine supplies for 92 developing countries.
From the results of Wouters’ research looking at data on vaccine sales globally, rich countries have secured 70 percent of the Covid-19 vaccine doses. This amount is even enough to vaccinate their population many times over.
“Safeguarding vaccines in large numbers like this would mean a rich country prioritizing mass vaccination against its own population rather than considering vaccinations for health care workers and high-risk communities in poor countries,” he said.
Wouters also asked vaccine manufacturers to accelerate technology transfer to developing countries to help them produce vaccines domestically and to control the soaring price of vaccines in the market.
So far the vaccines produced by China, India and Russia have been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). This vaccine can be a big help to poor countries because it is simpler to store than the vaccines made in the United States and Europe.
(nly/sfr)
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