Mary Wilson
Well-known member
Published: 24 March 2022
Cite this as: BMJ 2022;376:e070650
doi: 10.1136/bmj-2022-070650
Gavin Yamey, Patricia Garcia, Fatima Hassan, Wenhui Mao, Kaci Kennedy McDade, Madhukar Pai, Senjuti Saha, 5 Philip Schellekens, 6 Andrea Taylor, 7 Krishna Udayakumar7
Gavin Yamey and colleagues say that a new, urgent push for global vaccine equity could help avert suffering and deaths, protect economies, and prevent new virus variants
During the covid-19 pandemic, we have seen the best of international collective action and its limits. Global scientific cooperation drove the development of safe, highly effective covid-19 vaccines in under one year.1Yet we have also witnessed global vaccine inequity,2in which low and middle income countries have“limited supply and limited vaccine brand options.”3
With the omicron wave dissipating, several well vaccinated high income nations with stockpiles of covid-19 vaccines are rushing to declare the pandemic over, reminding us of how things unfolded with tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS in the past. But the pandemic is not over and 2.8 billion people remain completely unvaccinated. Now is the time to recommit to, and further invest in, equitable and effective country led vaccination campaigns.
In this paper, we briefly examine how global vaccine inequity arose, lay out a renewed case for urgently ramping up our commitment to vaccine equity, and propose principles to ensure no one is left behind in the quest to vaccinate the world.
What caused global vaccine inequity?
Vaccination coverage varies starkly by country income level. Although over 11 billion vaccine doses have been administered, nearly 70% of them benefited high and upper middle income countries.4As of 19 March 2022, 79% of people in high income countries had received at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine, compared with just 14% in low income countries.4 Primary vaccination and booster coverage have been highly regressive (fig 1). ...
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/376/bmj-2022-070650.full.pdf
Cite this as: BMJ 2022;376:e070650
doi: 10.1136/bmj-2022-070650
Gavin Yamey, Patricia Garcia, Fatima Hassan, Wenhui Mao, Kaci Kennedy McDade, Madhukar Pai, Senjuti Saha, 5 Philip Schellekens, 6 Andrea Taylor, 7 Krishna Udayakumar7
Gavin Yamey and colleagues say that a new, urgent push for global vaccine equity could help avert suffering and deaths, protect economies, and prevent new virus variants
During the covid-19 pandemic, we have seen the best of international collective action and its limits. Global scientific cooperation drove the development of safe, highly effective covid-19 vaccines in under one year.1Yet we have also witnessed global vaccine inequity,2in which low and middle income countries have“limited supply and limited vaccine brand options.”3
With the omicron wave dissipating, several well vaccinated high income nations with stockpiles of covid-19 vaccines are rushing to declare the pandemic over, reminding us of how things unfolded with tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS in the past. But the pandemic is not over and 2.8 billion people remain completely unvaccinated. Now is the time to recommit to, and further invest in, equitable and effective country led vaccination campaigns.
In this paper, we briefly examine how global vaccine inequity arose, lay out a renewed case for urgently ramping up our commitment to vaccine equity, and propose principles to ensure no one is left behind in the quest to vaccinate the world.
What caused global vaccine inequity?
Vaccination coverage varies starkly by country income level. Although over 11 billion vaccine doses have been administered, nearly 70% of them benefited high and upper middle income countries.4As of 19 March 2022, 79% of people in high income countries had received at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine, compared with just 14% in low income countries.4 Primary vaccination and booster coverage have been highly regressive (fig 1). ...
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/376/bmj-2022-070650.full.pdf
