Vaccines are now being developed at an unprecedented rate to protect against the corona virus. And at an unprecedented pace, governments are signing contracts with pharmaceuticals to reserve those vaccines for their own people. In that madness, the question is lost what a fair distribution of those still scarce vaccines would be.
An international group of scientists poses and answers that question today in the journal Science, Trouw writes. The group consists of epidemiologists, economists, philosophers and ethicists. One of them is Lisa Herzog, assistant professor of political philosophy at the University of Groningen.
The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes that vaccines can best be divided according to population, so that in a first phase 3 percent of people in all countries can be vaccinated, and in a second phase 20 percent. Not a good idea, says the group of scientists in Science.
Herzog: “You do not take into account at all the damage that the virus causes because people die or suffer permanent health damage. A distribution purely by number of inhabitants means that there will be a loss of healthy life years, while you could have prevented that. ethically incorrect. “
By: ANP | Photo: ANP
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