By Josep Borrel*
By
the end of May 2021, only 2.1 % of Africans have received at least one dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine. We need to close the vaccination gap between advanced
economies and developing countries to avoid what Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of
the World Health Organisation, has called “vaccination apartheid”. Doing so is
both morally right and in everyone’s interest.
اضافة اعلان
Therefore,
we need global multilateral action to increase the production of vaccines and accelerate
the roll out worldwide. Since the beginning of the pandemic, this is the path chosen
by the EU. It is now also the path defined by the G20 leaders at the Global
Health Summit in Rome on 21 May.
The
pandemic is still killing thousands of people every day and at the current pace,
the whole world will not be vaccinated before 2023. Yet, a widely vaccinated
world population is the only way to end the pandemic; otherwise, the
multiplication of variants is likely to undermine the effectiveness of existing
vaccines.
Vaccination
is also a prerequisite for lifting the restrictions that are holding back our
economies and freedoms. These restrictions penalise the whole world, but they
weigh even more heavily on developing countries. Advanced countries can rely
more on social mechanisms and economic policy levers to limit the impact of the
pandemic on their citizens.
If the vaccination gap persists,
it risks reversing the trend in recent decades of declining poverty and global
inequalities. Such a negative dynamic would hold back economic activity and increase
geopolitical tensions. The cost of inaction would for sure be much higher for
advanced economies than what we collectively would have to spend to help
vaccinate the whole world. Therefore, the EU welcomes the $50 billion plan
proposed by the International Monetary Fund in order to be able to vaccinate
40% of the world population in 2021 and 60% by mid-2022.
To
achieve this goal, we need closely coordinated multilateral action. We must
resist the threats posed by "vaccine diplomacy", linking the
provision of vaccines to political goals, and "vaccine nationalism",
reserving vaccines for oneself. In contrast to others, the EU has rejected both
since the beginning of the pandemic. Until now, we have been the only global
actor that is vaccinating its own population; exporting large volumes of vaccines;
and contributing substantially to the vaccines rollout in low-income countries.
Europeans can be proud of this record.
In
2020, the EU supported the research and development of vaccines on a large
scale and contributed significantly to the new generation of mRNA vaccines. The
EU then became a major producer of COVID-19 vaccines with, according to the WHO,
around 40% of the doses used globally so far. The EU has also exported 240
million doses to 90 countries, which is about as much as we have used within
the EU.
The
EU with its member states and financial institutions – what we call “Team
Europe” – is also donating vaccines to neighbors in need, particularly in the
Western Balkans. It aims to donate at least 100 million more doses to low- and
middle-income countries before the end of 2021, as agreed at the last European
Council. With €2.8 billion, Team Europe has also been the main contributor to
the COVAX facility, which enables poorer countries to access vaccines; around
one-third of all COVAX doses delivered so far have been financed by the EU. However,
this effort is still far from sufficient to prevent the vaccination gap from
widening.
To
fill this gap, countries with the required knowledge and means should increase
their production capacities, so that they can both vaccinate their own
populations and export more vaccines, as the EU is doing. In cooperation with
vaccine manufacturers, we are working to increase the EU vaccine production
capacities to more than 3 billion doses a year by the end of 2021. Our European
industrial partners have committed to deliver 1.3 billion doses of
vaccines before the end of 2021 to low-income countries at no-profit and to
middle-income countries at lower prices. They have also committed themselves to
further deliver over 1.3 billion doses for 2022 – many of which will be
delivered through COVAX.
All countries must avoid
restrictive measures that affect vaccine supply chains. We also need to
facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technology, so that more countries can
produce vaccines. For our part, we are strongly encouraging European producers
to do so, especially in Africa. I participated at the Paris summit on financial
support for Africa on 18 May, where the continent's leaders stressed that
Africa imports 99% of its vaccines. This has to change. Team Europe is
launching an initiative to this end – backed by €1 billion funding from the EU
budget and European development financial institutions – with African partners to
boost manufacturing capacity in Africa for vaccines, medicines and health
technologies.
Voluntary licensing is the privileged
way to ensure such transfer of technology and know-how. If it turns out to be
insufficient, the existing TRIPS Agreement and the 2001 Doha Declaration
already foresee the possibility of compulsory licensing. According to some
countries, these flexibilities are however too difficult and too slow to use. To
speed up these technology transfers, the EU will come forward with a new
proposal in the WTO framework by early June.
The
COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that health is a global public good. Our
common global COVID-19 vaccine action to close the vaccination gap must be the
first step toward a genuine global
health cooperation, as foreseen by the Rome Declaration recently adopted
at the Global Health Summit.
*
Josep Borrell is EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission. He contributed this article to Jordan News.