Momina Moin – Writer
Politics is a sophisticated word, unless it associates itself with the human health. Power politics, socioeconomic and racial disparities have played havoc with human lives over the course of time. There have always been areas on the face of earth which have been deprived of basic health facilities.
Divisions on the basis of racial-economic-social differences, can be seen and felt in all sectors. World has been inflicted with various diseases, that proved to be lethal at that time, and curable later. But for some regions, for some people, this LATER never arrived.
This gap between have’s and have not’s, is now more pronounced and notable, in terms of Covid Vaccine.
Almost 1.6 million Africans lost their lives to malaria, tuberculosis and HIV in 2015. These diseases can be prevented if treated with the right medicines at the right time. The sad part is, only 2% of drugs are produced in Africa, and rest have to imported. The imported medicines and vaccinations, are expensive for common Africans. Pharmaceuticals, like all other corporations and businesses, have created their model of monopoly capitalism. Locally produced medicines, like that of Brazilian drug for AIDS, cannot be sent or sold to let’s say Somalia, in the name of patent protection. These big pharmaceuticals have the backing of their respective governments, who are aware of the fact that availability of inexpensive medicines in the local markets, will collapse their corporate kingdom. The companies do not provide technical assistance to these developing and underdeveloped countries because they do not want to dig their own grave.
This was not enough, and the world was hit by Covid in 2019. This virus took lives of people, irrespective of their economic, social or racial background. It’s spread was gradual and somehow fairly distributive. But then came the cure, the vaccine, and that reminded us once again that we live in a realist, prejudicial and corporate world. Vaccine equity is the need of time, the pandemic has hit the globe equally, therefore, equality in terms of it’s cure seems to be the only right option.But as per the statistics provided by Director General of World Health Organisation there have been 832 million administered vaccine doses out of which only 0.2% reached the low income countries, and 82% distributed among the high to upper middle income countries, through a method of natural selection and survival of the fittest.
Poor regions like Africa seems to be the major recipient of unequal distribution of this cure. I will not use the word vaccine here, rather I prefer to use the word cure. This word reflects the fact that something as necessary as healing needs to be dispensed without any barricades.
Apart from the African region, the rich gulf countries, and the region we call middle east is going through the same fiasco. The rich countries of the region have easy access to the vaccine, but countries like Yemen, Syria and Libya tend to share the same fate as poor African countries.
Even within the rich countries, a clear divide is visible. African Americans are not expected to have easy access to vaccination like other white and hispanic Americans.
These differences are doing nothing but making the already challenging task of fighting with this pandemic more challenging. Every new predicament brings with it new kinds of inequalities. Along with other imbalances, like social, economic, ethnic, racial, regional, the world will soon be having enough of immunity inequality. And this in my opinion will be worst of all.
The author can be reached at momeenamoin@gmail.com
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