Indian doctors' body OMAG slams Covid-19 vaccine hoarding by rich nations

OMAG feels it is not the first time that rich nations are hoarding many more doses than their population needs

Organized Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG), A professional doctors body, has joined the World Health Organization's (WHO) call to wealthy nations to stop hoarding Covid-19 medicines and vaccines, saying that it is not only prolonging the fight against the pandemic but also leading to failure of the global fight against the coronavirus.

“No rich nation can alone firewall itself from the Covid pandemic in this world of growing interdependence and globalisation. Not only Coronavirus from Wuhan, China, had spread on every continent including Antarctica in a short span of time, but even the new Delta strain has spread to over 180 nations wreaking havoc,” OMAG stated.

OMAG, a federation of 15 professional associations of post-graduate doctors in India covering 2.5 lakh consultants, feels it is not the first time that rich nations are hoarding many more doses than their population needs. They have been doing this even before any of the vaccines were even officially approved by the medicine regulators and the WHO, the doctors' body said.

Dr IS Gilada, General Secretary, OMAG had said in 2020, that when research was then underway for most promising vaccine candidates — and scientific verdict on their efficacy was not out yet — rich countries had pre-bought more doses than they needed, shunting the rest of the world backwards in the queue.

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“Now nine months later, because of the selfish attitude of the rich nations, we have a stark contrast in full vaccination coverage globally – rich nations stand with over 80 per cent of their population fully vaccinated (and some have begun third or booster dose) while low and middle-income countries struggle their way to even reach the WHO target of 10 per cent vaccination of their population by September end,” he said.

Glancing through the data published in Nature, the rich countries have purchased 4.5 to 9 doses per person for their people – Canada 9, USA 7.5, UK 6, Australia 5.5 and European Union 4.5 doses per person. “By their self-centered actions, they are bound to attract hatred from the rest of the world. No wonder all those countries are eying on India for their emergent needs and sooner than later India will meet that challenge too. By then the rich countries would have been shamed beyond repair,” a statement by Dr Gilada and OMAG president Dr Suneela Garg read.

According to them, it has been over 9 months since the Covid-19 vaccination began around the world and 5.9 billion doses have been administered worldwide. However, over 80 per cent of these doses were given in rich nations.

“Countries like Singapore, France, Uruguay and Chile have over 80 per cent vaccination coverage; European Union nations and the UK have over 60 per cent vaccination coverage, over 55 per cent in the USA. India has over 20 per cent fully vaccinated population. But low-and middle-income countries have very low vaccination coverage generally. In the African continent, for example, 3.6 per cent people have received their full vaccine dose so far. It is a mockery of ‘one world-one health’ concept,” the statement said.

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