While there is no definitive word regarding a timeline for the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced this week that it will be mobilising US$1 billion to help countries in the region acquire and distribute the vaccine. The funds which the IDB is in the process of raising will reportedly supplement an earlier US$1.2 billion commitment which the Bank had made in response to the pandemic earlier this year as well as other funds which have been programmed for 2021. These funds are intended to save lives by financing public health measures, including enhanced testing and tracing and a higher quality of clinical management of victims of the pandemic.
And in what would appear to be a preparatory process for the administering of the vaccine, the IDB is issuing a call for Latin America and Caribbean governments to redouble their efforts to prepare national deployment and vaccination plans. IDB President Mauricio Claver-Carone was quoted earlier this week as saying that the Bank was expanding its support “to help Latin America and Caribbean countries ensure timely access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccinations.”
In recent weeks, media attention in the region has become increasingly shared between the pandemic, on the one hand, and the anticipated intervention of the long-awaited vaccine option, on the other, which, the international community hopes, will bring an end to what, at this stage, has been a near year-long global ordeal.
With a vaccine intervention now a reality, other issues have arisen, including the timing and logistics linked to the movement of the vaccines to poor countries. This, for some weeks now, has been the subject of international discourse. Some international organisations, not least the World Bank and the IDB have raised the issue of the need to for sufficient oversight to be exercised in addressing the disbursement of both material aid and vaccinations in order to try to rein in the corrupt practices that frequently erupt in times of crisis. “The coming months will be critical to altering the course of the pandemic and supporting the recovery of our region,” Claver-Carone was quoted as saying recently.
Earlier, the IDB had disclosed that it would support Latin America and the Caribbean in three ways; first, by supporting the financing of vaccine doses for the people of the region, secondly, by providing institutional strengthening to help countries develop effective vaccine deployment mechanisms, and thirdly, by investing in the building of immunisation capacity and financing the operating costs associated therewith. In pursuit of these objectives the Bank says that it will be working closely with other institutions including the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
While the majority of the Caribbean remains none the wiser on the matter of a time frame for a vaccine becoming available to the region, back in October, the authorities in Trinidad and Tobago had announced its preparations for the receipt and storage of 280,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. The storage plans, the country’s Health Minister, Terrence Deyalsingh had said, had included the planned building of three walk-in chillers in which to store the vaccines.
