THE World Health Organisation (WHO) Zimbabwe COVID-19 Team Leader, Dr Lincoln Charimari has warned that adopting vaccine boosters to enhance immunity in already vaccinated populations could trigger massive disparities in as far as vaccines access is concerned for resource limited countries.
By Michael Gwarisa
His remarks come at the back of indications that vaccine manufactures in other parts of the world were already submitting data seeking authorization to administer COVID-19 booster shots for their vaccinated populations especially those with compromised immunity.
In an interview with HealthTimes, Dr Charimari said it was too early for Zimbabwe to consider going the booster route.
Boosters are not yet a route to take because evidence of their effectiveness is still put together. However, please take serious note that boosters will potentially lead to entrenchment of vaccine nationalism by the wealthy countries and widening of global vaccine inequalities between the rich and the poor countries,” said Dr Charimari.
He added that there was need to prioritize resource limited countries under the current vaccination wave.
“What we need is for available vaccines to be made available to poor countries first before boosters can be introduced.”
Vaccine Nationalism is the prioritization of domestic needs of the country in an outlay of others. Of late, rich countries have been purchasing and hoarding vaccine supplies for their utilization, a move that has seen poorer countries struggling to access vaccines and in some cases failing to vaccinate people.
The WHO Zimbabwe National Professions Officer for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), Dr Edmore Munongo recently said vaccine nationalism was putting resource poor countries such as Zimbabwe at a disadvantage as powerful nations were purchasing doses in excess while poor country are struggling to make ends meet.
“I am sure you are all aware of inequities that are happening in the provision of health services especially when we are faced with the current pandemic of COVID-19. Inequitable distribution of vaccines across the world with richer nations getting a bigger share and poorer nations struggling to get even the little that they can is making it difficult for low resource countries to advance vaccine access.”
More than 98 percent of Africa’s population has yet to be vaccinated, and yet several countries are considering booster shots for their populations while Coronavirus deaths in Africa surged by 80 percent in July and many African countries are still facing a devastating third wave of COVID-19 infections.
