as coronavirus vaccination programs get
underway around the world
there are concerns growing that the
poorest nations may
be missed out or left to the very end of
a very long queue
for the resources now one of the
arguments being put forward to back that
claim
is the amount of surplus vaccine being
bought by wealthy countries some
estimates suggest they
have pre-ordered enough to vaccinate
their entire populations
three times over making it of course
that much harder for everyone else
to access them well heidi chow is with
global justice now one of the
organizations campaigning
on the issue for people's coveted
alliance heidi thank you very much for
joining us
um there are some arguments for having
more doses than you have people because
we don't know necessarily
the efficacy of all of these
vaccinations and and of course
the rate at which they'll come in is
that a fair argument
uh good morning yeah thank you for
having me on yes so the people's vaccine
alliance is a global alliance of
campaigners and organizations and we are
saying that we're seeing this gaping
inequality and access to vaccines
so like you said where we might have um
in high income countries the ability to
vaccinate
our populations uh three times over
there are many countries in the world
and especially the poorest countries in
the world which are left with virtually
very little or none but i suppose
we don't yet know about the efficacy of
all of these different vaccines and we
don't actually yet know about the
delivery either so
isn't that one of the reasons why
governments are over ordering
the the governments that are over
ordering are actually the high income
countries that are over ordering
actually lower middle income countries
have struggled to access any of the
vaccine doses at all because most of it
has been ordered by high income
countries
and in the time of a global pandemic
instead of having
most of the doses spoken for by high
income countries we should be actually
working together collaboratively
to ensure that there is a fair
allocation for all vulnerable
groups all at-risk groups in whichever
country they live in
this is not just a solidarity and
fairness argument
it's also a public health argument
because actually when you leave
vulnerable groups um
uh unvaccinated in whichever country
they live in
um we we get to see that the continued
disruption to public health systems
and to economies yeah of course should
the criteria then be
how badly affected any individual
country is if it's going to be a level
playing field
i think there are two issues here the
first is how do we allocate the
um initial supplies that we have in the
world uh today
and we need we need countries to work
together to
to agree on the priorities for fair
global allocation
but the more bigger issue and the more
structural issue is how do we
actually increase the level of vaccine
supplies and because we've seen this
level of hoarding because we're faced
with a scarcity problem
the world can't produce enough of the
produce enough
doses because that the companies that
are developing these vaccines
hold the patents the intellectual
property and the technological know-how
and so essentially these companies have
a monopoly and so we have a monopoly
situation
in during a time of global crisis yeah
very briefly do you have much optimism
that that something
better can be achieved because there's
been plenty of talk about
working for everyone together very
briefly yeah
yeah there is a proposal at the world
trade organization that's been discussed
this week
to actually suspend patent rules during
the pandemic for covert 19 vaccines and
treatments
as a recognition that during this global
crisis every country should have a fair
shot
at accessing the vaccines and the
treatments that they need to get out of
this pandemic
together okay heidi chow thank you very
much indeed