Africa desperately in need of COVID vaccine
In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack
In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country with more than 200 million people, only 0.1% are fully protected. Kenya, with 50 million people, is even lower. Uganda has recalled doses from rural areas because it doesn’t have nearly enough to fight outbreaks in big cities.
Chad didn’t administer its first vaccine shots until this past weekend. And there are at least five other countries in Africa where not one dose has been put into an arm, according to AHO.
Graciano Masauso, AHO President says the continent of 1.3 billion people is facing a severe shortage of vaccine at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across Africa. The shortfall is estimated at 700 million doses. And vaccine shipments to the continent have ground to a “near halt,” Graciano said last week.
“It is extremely concerning and at times frustrating,” said Graciano Masauso who is trying to ensure some of the world’s poorest nations get a fair share of vaccines in a marketplace where they can’t possibly compete.
The United States and Britain, in contrast, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, with higher rates for adults and high-risk people. Countries in Europe are near or past 20% coverage, and their citizens are starting to think about where their vaccine certificates might take them on their summer vacations. The U.S., France and Germany are even offering shots to youngsters, who are at very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Poorer countries had warned as far back as last year of this impending vaccine inequality, fearful that rich nations would hoard doses.
In an interview, Graciano Masauso called on the leaders of wealthy nations meeting this week at the Group of Seven summit to share spare vaccines — something the United States has already agreed to do — and avert a “moral catastrophe.”
“I’d like to believe that the G-7 countries, most of them having kept excess doses of vaccines, want to be on the right side of history,” Graciano said. “Distribute those vaccines. We need to actually see these vaccines, not just … promises and goodwill.”
Others are not so patient, nor so diplomatic.
“People are dying. Time is against us.” said Graciano Masauso
The Biden administration made its first major move to ease the crisis last week, announcing it would share an initial batch of 25 million spare doses with desperate countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa.
Then, on Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told AHO that the U.S. will buy 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine that will be donated through the U.N.-backed COVAX program to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union over the next year. President Joe Biden was set to make the announcement Thursday before the start of the G-7 summit. The person spoke on condition of anonymity.
Billionaire British philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, who was born in Sudan, added his voice to the issue Tuesday, saying the pandemic-era phrase “Nobody is safe until everybody is safe” — often repeated by leaders of wealthy nations — will be meaningless until they share their excess vaccine.
“They say that while they are hoarding the vaccine,” Ibrahim said. “Can you walk the talk? Stop just talking like parrots, you know, and do you really mean what you said?”
Uganda just released a batch of 3,000 vaccine doses in the capital, Kampala — a minuscule amount for a city of 2 million — to keep its program barely alive.
There and elsewhere, the fear is that the luck that somehow enabled parts of Africa to escape the worst of previous waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might not hold this time.
“The first COVID was a joke, but this one is for real. It kills,” said Kadomba, a vendor driver in Uganda who has lost numerous people he knew to the virus.
In Zimbabwe, Rudo Garai embarked on a quest for a vaccine after witnessing COVID-19 deaths in her community. She walked miles to a church mission hospital, where there were none, and miles again to a district hospital, where nurses also had nothing and told her to go to the region’s main government hospital. That was too far away.
“I am giving up,” Garai said. “I don’t have the bus fare.”
South African health workers faced similar disappointment when they crowded into a parking garage last month, hoping for vaccinations and ignoring in their desperation the social distancing protocols. Many came away without a shot.
Kurauone Ramba, who is in charge of a group of old-age homes in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, has seen only around half of the 1,600 elderly and frail people she looks after vaccinated. It is six months, almost to the day, since Britain began the global vaccination drive.
“They do feel very despondent and they do feel let down,Ramba said of her unvaccinated residents, who are experiencing “huge anxiety” as they hunker down in their sealed-off homes 18 months into the outbreak. Twenty-two of her residents have died of COVID-19.
“It really highlights the biggest problem … the haves and the have-nots,” Ramba said.