Begging for vaccines in Caracas
with no idea of who is listening.
Family members collecting the dead themselves
with no idea of who's actually counting those lost.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Julio Castro
says his fellow Venezuelans feel alone now.
Unable to trust either the numbers or the plan.
So we are doing a kind of unofficial surveillance system
which taking count 20-40 of the bigger hospital in Venezuela
and the numbers are quite different from the
from the official numbers.
[Reporter] Help is not coming fast.
Venezuela rejected offers of AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX.
It may get some mRNA vaccines from the group in July.
The United States has excluded Venezuela
from its vaccination donations for now.
citing a lack of transparency about how the country
has handled COVID.
And deals made with Russian and Chinese firms
haven't seen promised deliveries arrive in sufficient numbers.
The black market though is surging
for those with means.
Paying up to hundreds of dollars for a shot.
This is irregular.
This is unethical.
And this is dangerous for people.
[Reporter] And Dr. Castro worries the once-wealthy nation
is now so mismanaged it has no resilience
to handle either the illness
or more economic collapse.
Humanitarian crisis is the worst-case scenario for Venezuela
and we are in the middle of that.
Doctors leaving the country.
[Reporter] This is where COVID's global complications get uglier.
For the first year of the pandemic
it was a problem for wealthier countries.
Perhaps because they tend to have older populations.
But something happened a few weeks ago in May.
On a single day, the pandemic flipped.
With vaccines available for the rich
the death rates in higher and middle-income countries
dropped below those in lower-income countries
for the very first time.
The poorest nations with the youngest populations
and the weakest infrastructure
now see the most death and illness.
COVID has officially turned its sights on the global poor.
Mark that day on the calendar as the one
Achal Prabhala in Bangalore, India really started to panic.
And I find that this is more terrifying in a way
because what it means is
when poor countries are left to themselves
for a disease that primarily affects them
it will mean that they will be worse off
and have less resources to deal with that.
[Reporter] He's a global campaigner for access to medicine
and says as wealthy countries see their dangers diminish
and plan reopening
they forget the promise of we're all in this together.
India didn't see huge loss until a few months ago.
Now nearly 350,000 are dead
and the health-care system is in crisis.
The day our cameras were there
Prabhala was supposed to get his second shot
but the clinic ran out.
And there's the enormous ironic problem.
The country that's the world's largest vaccine manufacturer
is short on vaccines.
Barely three per cent of its 1.3 billion people
have been inoculated.
Why do we have a vaccine shortage?
The Indian government did really nothing
to prepare itself for the pandemic.
When the first phase of the pandemic passed
they invested nothing for the bulk of the year
of the pandemic
in any vaccine development efforts in this country.
[Reporter] India's Serum Institute did have COVAX contracts
to supply 92 of the world's poorest countries with vaccines.
Enough for 4 billion people relying on that help.
Deliveries were slow at first
then once the virus started wreaking havoc in India
delivery stopped totally.
And given that these vaccines were being made in our borders
the government had the authority to restrict those exports.
Countries that are waiting for vaccines from India.
Vaccines that are now not coming.
What are they going to do?
Well, they have decided
that they cannot rely on the COVAX facility
which is what promised them these vaccines.
So it's failed dismally
and so what they did is to prepare themselves
by buying vaccines on their own.
One of the problems is that any
any country that woke up late to understanding
that it needs a large supply of vaccines
is now at the back of the queue.
[Reporter] Some of those countries now trying to make deals for vaccines
really don't have the means to pay for them.
Like Nigeria.
Of its 200 million people
less than one per cent are vaccinated.
It has among the fewest doctors per capita
in the developing world.
And so little testing, it looks like there's very little COVID
but the virus shows its cruelties.
Nafisat Adamu used to work in a bank
but lost her job.
So did a third of the country.
Global COVID lockdowns and low oil prices
demolishing the economy.
I don't need, I don't get help from any government.
I don't need, I don't get help from anybody.
I am on my own.
[Reporter] No jobs and a creeping sense of feeling unsafe.
Surging violence in Nigeria
a side effect of being an unvaccinated and fragile country.
There cannot be more kidnapping, more robbery
more killing, more bandit
more Boko issues, a lot of things.
The only trigger that we know right now
that has led to this is this
is gross economic you know recession
that we've experienced.
So the sooner we get this pandemic over the better for the whole world.
[Reporter] Edwin Ikhouria is the Africa director for the One Campaign
a global effort to end poverty.
As shocked as he is by what's happening in Nigeria
he is baffled by this country.
Look at the number of vaccines per capita each nation has secured.
The one that secured more doses per person than any other country in the world
is Canada.
And it is already vaccinating children.
From the outside, this looks dangerously selfish.
It may be great for the political landscape
but while you're vaccinating children over the age of 12
just remember that health workers in some low-income country
who are also facing this virus every
day do not have access to a vaccine.
Remember
that as long as these virus remains with them
remains in those places
it continues to mutate
it will come back to your own population in the long run
and then every effort you've made before will be wasted.
[Reporter] And if the medical humanitarian argument
does not inspire sharing vaccines immediately
maybe an economic one will.
Once the virus is ravaging in other places of the earth
everything that Canada needs from those places
or that supposed to be selling to those places
will not be there, right.
[Reporter] The bulk of the world always feared they'd be left behind
and now they see it happening.
See politics at play, not co-operation.
At the very moment, sharing matters most.