Shamed, perhaps, by last month’s feral blast by World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus over the unequal allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations among rich and poor countries, the leaders of the Group of Seven global economic powerhouses have undertaken to move to immunise the world’s neediest people against the rampaging COVID-19 pandemic by contributing both finances and vaccine doses to a United Nations-backed vaccine distribution effort aimed at redressing what is now accepted as an unacceptable imbalance in the global distribution of the vaccines.
The decision appears to have been reached at a virtual meeting of the leaders of the so-called Group of Seven nations prior to an online parley of the European Council on Friday February 19.
In mid-January, during an address at an Executive Board meeting of the WHO, the Ethiopian-born Gebreyesus appeared to depart from the protocols associated with the behaviour of UN agencies, declaring that the world was “on the brink of a moral catastrophe” on account of the unequal sharing of COVID-19 vaccinations.
What was apparently viewed by the head of the UN agency as an unacceptable walk-back on the UN-ingrained ‘one world’ axiom was further underscored by a gesture by the Prime Minister of the tiny Caribbean island of Barbados, Mia Mottley, of sharing her country’s modest COVID-19 allocation with the rest of a region where badly affected countries still await allocations of their own.
At the time of the meeting of the WHO Executive Board, Gebreyesus had been quoted as saying that “more than 39 million doses of vaccine” had been administered “in at least 49 higher-income countries” while “just 25 doses” had been given in one lowest-income country. Tedros had added that if rich countries do not share COVID-19 vaccines with poor countries, “this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods.”
Since then it appears that the UN, as a whole, has moved to stand behind the WHO Director General’s moral appeal, associating itself with the commitment made last Friday by the Leaders of the Group of Seven economic powers to immunise the world’s neediest people against the coronavirus by giving money, and vaccine doses, to a vaccine-distribution effort backed by the United Nations.
With the leaders of the G-7 countries reportedly under domestic political pressure over their individual domestic vaccination campaigns, the word from Geneva is that there has been some degree of ‘hedging of bets’ over both how many doses of vaccination they are willing to share with poor countries as well as a time line for the global disbursement of those doses. A report from last week’s G-7 group meeting had, however, quoted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as saying that fair distribution of vaccines was “an elementary question of fairness” though she reportedly added that “no vaccination appointment in Germany is going to be endangered,” seemingly an indication that her country intended to hold fast to an ‘us first’ position.
At the end of the virtual meeting the leaders reportedly agreed that they would “accelerate global vaccine development and deployment” and support “affordable and equitable access to vaccines” and treatments for COVID-19, citing a collective US$7.5 billion financial contribution from the G-7 to UN-backed COVID-19 efforts.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also reported to have spoken up on the desirability of the world “moving together” in the fight against COVID-19.
Seemingly chastened by their own COVID-19 challenges, not least those that have to do with the effective enforcement of safeguard protocols and mustering the material resources to respond to what in many instances has been rising numbers of infections, developing countries, including Caribbean Community countries, appear to have opted to remain strictly on the fringe of the discourse pertaining to the moral and ethical considerations relating to the global distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.
