African Countries Were Denied Access to Having Their Own Vaccine by Western Countries
theGazetteNGRPolicies from the colonial period and global health gatekeepers have made it almost impossible for African doctors and scientists to get their vaccines into clinical trials.
The Harvard-trained geneticist with international acclaim, Happi was the first to sequence coronavirus samples in Sub-Saharan Africa, before later identifying the arrival of the so-called ‘South African variant’ in Nigeria. He played a key role in containing an Ebola outbreak in Nigeria in 2014.
“We’ve
submitted proposals and we still don’t have a response,â€â€œIf we were able to produce a vaccine on
the continent, the issue of access would have been far less
overwhelming, but African countries don’t want to invest and who else is
going to come in and invest?â€
Scientists agreed that if a vaccine had been developed on the continent, the severe access problems that African countries are facing could have been avoided.
“I
know donors have committed money to vaccines further along, but it
doesn’t make sense to ignore [ACEGID’s vaccine] because it denies Africa
the opportunity to set up the infrastructure for future vaccine
development on other diseases,†Happi said.
The lack of government support for medical research and development is a recurring issue for scientists on the continent, with research spending remaining about 0.5 percent of GDP, well below the global average of 2.2 percent.
exclusively on foreign donors to provide access to drugs and vaccines, a
paradigm that Karsten Noko, a Zimbabwean lawyer who works in the health
and humanitarian sectors across Sub-Saharan Africa, claims is rooted in
the continent’s colonial history and was deliberately placed in place.
“Any
place that isn’t able to produce its own medications and supplies is
relegated to always carrying a begging bowl, but to understand the
healthcare systems and funding models in African nations you have to
examine the role of development institutions like the IMF and World
Bank,†Noko said in a Zoom interview.
“SAPs
eviscerated safety nets and public health infrastructures across the
Global South,†Richardson said via email.
“They privatised public
assets, cut spending on healthcare, food and farm subsidies, and
deregulated trade rules, such that illicit financial flows to the Global
North currently dwarf what is sent to the Global South in ‘aid.’â€
“The [IMF and World Bank] have abetted this continued
postcolonial extraction of wealth, leaving countries that are rich in
natural resources bereft and impoverished, which leads to situations
where countries become dependent on foreign actors for services like
healthcare.â€
For more than a century, the global health system has been dominated by organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in wealthy Western countries, which set the global research agenda, make investment decisions, and act as gatekeepers to life-saving medicines and technology.
“We
are stuck in a system we can’t get out of which has Western roots,
where we have no control over power and resources,†Kyobutungi said.
“It’s the same system the entire world operates on, so how do you
extricate yourself from that?â€.
Dicky Akanmori, WHO’s Regional Adviser for Vaccine Research and
Regulation, agreed.
“We’re attached to the same old funding mechanisms,
whereby grants come into Africa from international agencies or foreign
governments like the EU or Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,â€
Akanmori said. “Funding from within is still woefully inadequate, and if
you don’t bring the money, you don’t set the agenda, so our research is
driven by the Global North.â€
“It’s
designed to create a benefactor and a beneficiary, so that one party
always has the ability to manufacture and produce medications and
diagnostics, and the other doesn’t,†Noko said.
“You can almost call it a
patronage system. It’s the ability to decide who gets what, when.â€
the World Bank and the IMF shouldn’t be surprised by the COVID-19
vaccine inequity and lack of access we’re seeing, and if they are, they
need to be much more aware of their own role,†he added.
late 2020, an article went viral called “How (not) to write about
Global Health.†Its author was Desmond Jumbam, a Cameroonian health
policy consultant who uses satire to highlight structural inequalities
embedded in the current system and gives talks to university students
around the world on how to engage in responsible research practices when
visiting countries in the Global South.
have researchers who come and study our people, who take specimens and
then go study in the North to tell us about ourselves and our diseases,â€
he told Newsmen.
“Global health is still practiced in colonial
ways, particularly through resource allocation. A student at Harvard or
Johns Hopkins will have better access to research funding than an expert
in Cameroon ever will. So it’s a self-perpetuating system where,
because research capacity isn’t built on the continent, the expertise
here isn’t acknowledged. We’re still not seen as partners, instead it’s
quite exploitative,†Jumbam said.
“We
need to get our governments to see value in investing in African
resources,†Kyobutungi said.
“The missing link here is sustained
engagement between the research community and those who hold the purse
strings.â€
“People
in this movement say those in the Global North ‘need to be willing to
give up power,’†Jumbam said.
“People don’t just give up power, it goes
back to the African independence movements in the 50s and 60s, the
British and French didn’t just ‘give up power’, we had to demand it.
It’s similar for the global health movement, we need leaders and
intellectuals to rise up.â€
“If
governments really commit to this, they’ll be putting a very important
brick in the wall to prevent and deal with the next pandemic,†Patrick
Tippoo, a founding member of the African Vaccine Manufacturing
Initiative (AVMI), told newsmen.
GAVI developed a business model for selling vaccines in Africa after arriving in the early 2000s, collaborating with foreign donors and pharmaceutical companies to purchase vaccines at cheaper rates, ensure a demand for purchases, secure supply, and address issues of consistency, cost, and fairness.
“GAVI
has done a great job, but it has also hampered development in recipient
countries,†Professor Oyewale Tomori, an eminent Nigerian virologist
and former GAVI board member told Newsmen.
“The last question I
asked at a GAVI meeting was ‘Is GAVI forever?’ And my reason for asking
was that so many African governments – even when their economies are
developed enough – revert to GAVI-assistance instead of taking care of
their own people.â€
“There’s no debate over the remarkable
role GAVI has played, but it hasn’t helped to encourage the kind of
competition that would drive research and development on the continent.
The evolving landscape requires introspection…. and now is the time
for GAVI to reflect on a broader contribution it can make to incentivise
and free up the markets in Africa,’ he explained.
“We
have Africans that can develop vaccines,†he said.
“We’ve proven that
we have Africans that can develop therapies and diagnostics. We’ve
proven that, so if our governments were supporting those initiatives, we
wouldn’t have to wait for the global community to come in and make
decisions for us.â€
- Num: 1210002022
- Name: Ninchi Services Limited
- Bank: Zenith Bank
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