The Malaysian Insight

KHAIRY Jamaluddin today urged the World Bank to stand up for developing countries and speak out against vaccine hoarding by wealthier and advanced nations.

The coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said the World Bank has the responsibility to bring out the voice of the developing world and raise the extremely immoral act of hoarding vaccines by the industrialised countries.

He said while Malaysia appreciates the donations of vaccines that are coming from advanced countries, it does not take away the fact that these nations have cornered the vaccine market.

“We set up Covax in global solidarity as the mechanism to ensure vaccine equity and that has been an abysmal failure,” Khairy said.

Covax, or Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, is a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to vaccines directed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the World Health Organisation.

“I think the World Bank owes it to developing countries to be a strong voice for vaccine equity on the global stage to remind the rich countries that what has taken place over the last few months has fallen short of respectable and responsible global leadership,” he said at the launch of the World Bank Malaysia’s Economic Monitor report this morning.

Calling for solidarity on access to supplies, Khairy, who is also the science, technology and innovation minister, said vaccine equity is the only way out of the pandemic.

Khairy has been a strong critic against vaccine hoarding by wealthier nations and has previously cited this as a reason for the limited supplies and slow progress of the national vaccination programme.

Malaysia procured the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine via the Covax facility and has put in a request for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

WHO has warned of supply disparity even while the vaccines were still in development. It has noted that wealthy nations were able to secure enough doses to vaccinate their population multiple times over, leaving  poorer nations in short supply.

On June 21, WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward said more than half of poorer countries that were getting their vaccines via Covax did not have enough supply to continue vaccination.

He said the supply shortage was partly due to production delays and disruptions in India, which was experiencing a vicious Covid outbreak.

Global vaccine supply has been hampered by vaccine nationalism, inequity and supply bottleneck as manufacturers grapple with shortage of raw materials and unprecedented demand. – June 23, 2021.