We will not settle for leftover vaccines – COVAX, vaccine access and equity

To date, it is estimated that in high- and upper-middle-income countries, 81% of the population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. However, in low-income countries, only about 17% of the population has received at least one vaccine dose. Why do we see this gap in vaccination rates? What is being done to address it? In our final episode of the season,  we discuss vaccine access and equity and look into the successes and failures of COVAX – an initiative led by Gavi and other global organisations to provide equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to everyone worldwide. 

This week's case study: COVAX - https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/covax-explained 

Why do you think COVID-19 vaccine distribution has been unfair? Share your thoughts with us at worldhealthinvestigation@gmail.com

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Additional resources:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations 
Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html 
Covax facility - https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax 
Unequal access to vaccines - https://www.one.org/africa/issues/covid-19-tracker/explore-vaccines/ 
Patents and the COVID-19  vaccines - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01242-1

Transcript

Edna: It was this whole classic idea of like, oh, Africa is just like the white man's burden. We'll have to deal with Africa or something or no, there's more lower income countries and we have to save them.

Loza: Who are you? Did God leave you in charge of earth? Don't even make sense.

Jocelyne: I would like to address the misconception that the global south doesn't want vaccines. We never said we don't want vaccines. We have highlighted in this episode that COVAX was the initial incentive, but we have seen that there currently is a disparity. And most of the time when vaccines are being given to us, they are leftovers.

Hello globies. Welcome to the World Health Investigation podcast. My name is Jocelyne

Edna: I'm Edna

Loza: And I'm Loza

Edna: We're three young global health professionals. And your hosts for the World Health Investigation podcast.

Loza: Also known as the WHI. We'll be discussing all of these global health and unpacking the most controversial social and health issues.

Edna: As well as promoting new wave global health development and equity.

Jocelyne: So ladies, what is the tee in global health today?

Loza: Ladies, ladies? COVAX. Y'all ever heard of COVAX? Vaccines? equity?

Jocelyne: Equity in health, that's what we promote.

Loza: That's our, that's our brand. Right.

Edna: I'm familiar with that. You talking about COVAX?

Jocelyne: For our fellow globies, can you tell us what COVAX is?

Loza: Course, of course. Let me unpack that because it's not every day, everybody knows COVAX, but basically COVAX is this kind of initiative that was launched in April, 2020, remember 2020, when the panoramic Panasonic started. So then these people, they said, oh, this pandemic is.

Yeah. What even as a pandemic anymore, but yes. So when this Panasonic paranormal activity, it was getting serious. It was getting serious and they noticed, they said, okay, let's have a little meeting, um, to discuss like, how are we globally gonna respond to this pandemic? So Gavi y'all know, Gavi, Gavi, um, they'd be working with vaccines, go global vaccine coalition alliance,

The World Health Organization. WHO, WHO, um, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation and the Access to COVID 19 Tools, they all just came together and they said, let us come up with an initiative so that we can, um, ensure that diagnostics for COVID therapeutics, for COVID and vaccines for COVID will be spreading out equitably in the world.

Jocelyne: Beautiful. Fabulous.

Loza: The best idea. I mean, that's our brand. I mean, And that was their goal. And so the COVAX was going to be a platform that supported research and development for basically the manufacturing of these therapeutics vaccines, um, diagnostic tools. And then they would negotiate, they would enable the negotiation of prices so that, you know, both high-income countries and low income countries can have access to the resulting, you know, tools and vaccines without, um, you know, the rich countries, just getting everything and the rest of the world being forgotten. Yeah. And so it was all great.

And, you know, they had like outlined a little face system where, um, vaccines will be allocated to countries proportionally based on their population size. So then every participating country would received like, you know, 20%, um, vaccines for 20% of their population. And then after that, they would see like, you know, what countries more at risk and distribute vaccines.

It was all great to know. Beautiful idea. Beautiful idea.

Jocelyne: Yeah. Excellent.

Loza: And then, but then what happened? And then what happened? What'd you guys think happened in real life. What do we see right now? Did it work out? Did all the countries get 20% and then, and now everyone has vaccine?

Jocelyne: Every...people are talking about third doses, fourth doses when some countries don't even have one

Edna: Exactly to me, it's already giving where, where would these extra vaccines that they'd be so kind to give out come from with the way they're struggling you know..even with the way they were struggling to get hold of their own vaccines.

Loza: Exactly. So, I mean, from my personal perspective, so not me, I'm living in the so-called high income, the global north country. I have three doses of the vaccine. I'm 23. Now my grandparents in their 80s, that happen to be living in Ethiopia, have not even seen one vaccine, it has not even been offered to them. You know? So these harvest people in so many countries, they haven't seen it. And then, you know, here's us on our 20th dose. Um, and so that's the problem. So then the current figures at the time I research this, it showed that 3% of people in low-income countries were fully vaccinated.

Oh, my gosh. I remember when I said it's of the people. Yeah, exactly. In the low-income countries 3% is I even, like, is that even enough coverage to do anything

Jocelyne: In the whole low income countries. That includes all the countries, what?

Loza: Literally the majority of the world, basically majority of the world, whereas, you know, the rest of the world. The rest of the world, the Europes and the Americas, you know, who you are, um, had around at the time, 60% of their population vaccinated. Now it's even more. And the reason why it's not even like everybody is because of the Liberté, people that don't want to take the vaccine. It's not because of scarcity basically to. Yeah. And COVAX itself, you know, in the end they just, they ended up contributing like less than 5% of all the vaccines that were administered globally. Um, so they announced, you know, by the end of 2021, they announced they were missing their target. It just, it ended up being basically, um, a platform for them to just be begging rich countries. Like please you have leftover vaccines donated instead of it being a platform to negotiate and to basically ensure that these vaccines are distributed equitably. So now we are Africans. Well, some people claim Swiss

Edna: Why did you have to do that? As I said. And as the listeners will attest, you see, I am being bullied here. You will never take away, my Zimbabweaness

Loza: I really. Okay. Well, she's bi-Rachel. Okay. So coming from these, like so-called low income countries, how, like, how does that make you feel? Like, what do you think, where did we go wrong? What happened?

Jocelyne: For me, it sounds like, um, you know, how, let me pick my words very carefully. You know how, um, a lot of international organizations like setting big targets, like by 2030, we'll do this and that, we'll end AIDS, we'll end this, but we're approaching and it's not happening.

Um, it gives me that same energy. It gives me the energy, the vibe of okay. They were naively, they were so-called naively ambitious, and this happened to go wrong. So they couldn't, they couldn't hit that targets. When in reality, the priorities were, were not, were not on check from the beginning. Like the, the, the co I think with COVAX in particular, Was it not that a lot of, a lot of the rich countries didn't want to have an agreement with, um, waving, uh, intellectual property rights for vaccines,

Loza: Uh huh we're going to get into it.

Jocelyne: And so a lot of them didn't want to do they don't, they don't, I don't, I don't think they really want low income countries to be, um, what do you call it? Health equity, equity equitable and free.

Loza: Free, exactly like able to determine their own health

Jocelyne: There's a word I'm looking for, but they don't, they, I don't think they really want to see, they want to have the upper hand and they want, almost like a lot of nations want their country to be first. They want to say, oh, we have the best healthcare system. We have the best, uh, public health system. We have acted the fastest. We've done this we've done that. We have vaccines. We have covered, we have high vaccine coverage, but then it's like, if the low income countries cannot, do not have, um, high vaccine coverage, I'm sorry, the variants, the variants will pass through. Even if it pass through the low income countries, it will reach towards you. It will come back to you and even your economy is going to go back, go back, and you're going to go through inflation, just like all of us. And I remember seeing I had a stat. I remember reading a study showing that that actually, compared to low-income countries and high income countries. The comparison was that around 3 million doses, single, those were delivered in low income countries in comparison to 4 billion doses in high income countries.

Loza: It don't even make sense

Edna: That disparity

Loza: And it's for me is that for countries that claim to, you know, want equity and, you know, they participate in the sustainable development goals. Talking about, we want health for all. No, when it comes to action, they're like, ah, just kidding. Um, we were not being serious.

Edna: Yeah. At the same time. That's where I also ask, like in this whole. COVAX as they were coming up with what was needed and all these different things. Did they also consult all the different countries in terms of like, what are your actual needs right now in terms of COVID or like what, what are your needs? In fact, what are these countries where like, you know, for us, we don't think the vaccines are necessarily the best way. Give us more of the drugs or give us more of the diagnostic tools or perhaps, you know, help us in the manufacturing side of things, you know?

Loza: Exactly. Exactly. And this is where it goes like, so it goes into this kind of. We're global health somehow always ends up coming back to a neo-colonial structure where there is like the term, the global north countries that basically determine the direction health is going to go. They will say this is based on our kind of like what we wanted to, and you guys can have our leftovers if you want.

And so, yeah, no. And it's led into what has been referred to as you know, vaccine nationalism vaccine apartheid, but. Yes. It's obvious countries will have self-interests yes. Every country wants their. You know, their are people to benefit first, but then there are structures in global health that exists that continue to promote this and create like, you know, an inequitable environment.

And we've seen it so much with this vaccine, but it's the same with many other treatments and tools that exist in the world. And so like in terms of concreteness, what actually happened. So after, um, so th they all, you know, the countries met up and they agreed. They said, yes, that's great, beautiful vision.

And then, but then the moment the vaccine started to be announced, the moment Pfizer said, I have vaccine that works 95%, America was running. They said, we want 20 billion doses.

You know, and then, so the countries were scrambling to get the vaccines, secure them for their population. And so what happened, the other countries were forgotten, COVAX forgotten, and of course, pharmaceuticals are profit driven, profit driven health, but this is fantastic. We're going to be rich. So they're making unilateral agreement.

Fine. Um, I mean, Donald Trump at the time, he didn't even want to join COVAX. It was, he was, he said, I want no part in it. Um, and so because of this unilateral agreements, vaccine scarcity was created and you guys mentioned this, I like this is okay, fine. If there aren't any, you know, enough vaccines, these countries don't want to rely on aid, let us make our own vaccines.

They said, guess what? And

Edna: they said, sure, here you go.

Jocelyne: No problem. No, that's not what happened.

Loza: I wish in an ideal world, but no patents patents, patents, world, you know, intellectual property. What a concept and encourages science. Sure. But what happened? What happened was there were many, many moments where, you know, these countries, organizations, companies were hinting at like we are not sharing this.

Um, I don't care if this is a public health emergency. I don't care for all in this pandemic together. So we're not sharing the recipes. And there were like different instances. So the WHO first, you know how to call to action for like global cooperation in this pandemic, like, please let's work together.

And so they said, and one of them was to, you know, waiver, like intellectual properties. The pharmaceutical companies had a meeting at the same time and they said, yeah, we're not going to do that. And guess it was in attendance, Mr. Billiam Gates, the one that is also involved in COVID anyways. Um, so here are the people involved in global health are against, uh, waving intellectual properties.

And then. South Africa and India in 2020 in October proposed to the WTO to just waiver the P the patent for these vaccines. So they can produce it for themselves. They said, fine. You can give it through COVAX to us. Okay. If you can't, you know, share it equitably fine. Let us make it for ourselves. And the countries voted and Switzerland said, no, the EU said no,

countries. I do.

I don't know, speak to them. Speak to Alain Berset, it's not me who said it

Jocelyne: as you're speaking like this yeah, I feel like going directly going directly on knocking on the doors. If I was to go ask somebody, knock on somebody's door, who should I go? Whose fault is it? Who should we go to? Come on.

Loza: That's crazy. What a question.

Edna: That's a great question, because that's why I, like you're at-ing all these countries, true. But

you've also pointed the fact that you're at-ing organizations that can also be behind all of these different things like uh Bill, Bill, uh, but then it's like, who?

Loza: I don't know. It's hard to say, add, you know, but that's why. Such a mess is because there is so many structures, like systematic structures at all levels. And so on. I said, all levels are organizational levels. For example, in the WTO, like the world trade organization, why do these countries have so much power to basically.

Another country's request to make life-saving vaccines for themselves. Why are these countries like the govern, the government that people that decide why are they, you know, acting with, so my self-interest and essentially Justin, you were saying not only self-interest, but by not allowing these countries to make their own vaccines, they're prolonging the pandemic now will eventually affect them anyway.

Jocelyne: And my question is what is it about them making their own vaccines? Stop you from, from progressing in your healthcare system. What is it about them? Why would you say no to that?

Loza: Yeah, it goes back to profits, but when you really think about it, like the pandemic already makes them lose so much money, but it's like intellectual property.

It's just like, okay, we can, we came up with this idea, so we're not going to share it. This is our money. But prioritizing that in a public health emergency makes no sense.

Jocelyne: Uh, my question is more towards like, you know how, um, um, South Africa, you said south African, which one's the other country and India and in Botswana as well.

Yeah. Yeah. You know how they requested that? Okay. Give us the formula waiver, the person and the United Kingdom and the Switzerland under the USA and many other countries. And they said, they said, no, I'm saying, why are this country saying no, what's. Because to me.

Edna: Okay. Just based on general, I don't know what dealings they have, you know?

Exactly. But I would imagine it's a situation of obviously pharmaceutical companies have a lot of

Jocelyne: power. Like they, they take up a huge chunk of like economy, industry, business, that kind of thing. So they probably have a

Edna: lot of state and a lot of in with like different governments. So if I'm here as. I don't know this, this is the process that happens sometimes with these meetings, right?

Where it's like Swiss

Jocelyne: delegation is great. Therefore

Edna: Kovacs meeting to represent the interest of

Jocelyne: Switzerland. Me knowing this

Edna: as a pharmaceutical company, I will go out since someone to talk

Jocelyne: to the delegation of Switzerland. Like you

Edna: cannot let that pattern be wavered. You cannot let my partner to get waivered, otherwise ABCD or whatever.

They can lobby like that. And so not the delegation of Switzerland can be. They can be influenced in that way, what they can align with the summer school companies as well in the, in that kind of like position in the info. That's how you can get, I think to

Loza: me, no, exactly. Because these countries, you have to remember how like really big pharmaceutical companies that Switzerland has multiple, you know, the U S definitely has multiple and they make up a big part of the economy.

I mean, they make the country money. Power. And so, and you see it, I mean, in Switzerland, like a little off topic, but you see it in terms of tobacco, like, you know, the W2 hits the BALCO framework, convention and everything. Um, but Switzerland is like one of the few countries that actually has an accepted it.

Even if the, who is here because they have such a tobacco, the tobacco industry has such a hold on the Swiss government. So like, it is not surprising. The pharmaceutical company would also do this.

Edna: Um, yeah,

Jocelyne: it's an interesting

Edna: point. They're also protecting their own interests as like private companies and because they're able, because there's such a huge industry, I think they can do that with the government as well.

Especially like in the U S I know this whole issue of lobbying, like private companies lobby, but

Jocelyne: it's a big thing. Yeah. I think Lincoln buck in relation to, um, how exactly. This vaccinate inequality thing ended up becoming so concerning, particularly because. With this with one co conscious, like we're gay.

I remember reading a paper on times that it would get one. I think the, the, the, the ma who member states, um, Basadur requested, um, the vaccines to Kovacs and people were not responding. They were not responding to our calls. They were not responding to my messages. Don't always put into anything. And I think there were different ambassadors that also has similar issues of like, oh, we tried contacting them.

But again, Just pieces that bring us all types of yeses. They get turning us around around the Bush. So I think, yeah, that, that, that adds up to it as well.

Edna: That is why I also come back to the point of like, yeah, I do appreciate that. For example. You see this where South Africa, Botswana India, they came together and actually proposed a solution in terms of like, this is exactly what we need in order to actually like solve the problem that we're seeing here with the vaccines and getting access to the vaccines and get this to come back with like, no, not.

Oh my God. What, what you want and what you need it. No, we don't want that

Jocelyne: crazy because every day we claim vaccine equity. You know how many times I have to go to the bathroom, equity conferences, equity talks. When I say equity, all these big international organizations, they always run these things. But look what we're going through today.

I would have thought that, okay, maybe that wasn't the past, you know, We've seen it in this pandemic. This pandemic has been revealed the fact that it still exists and it is predominant in this society.

Loza: No, no, exactly. I think a pandemic has revealed so many cracks in global health. And in terms of this, like, it really has revealed how this structure.

Like the, the problems in the structures of like where a lot of the decision-making is in a certain group of countries hands. And then that eventually ultimately affects the rest of the world. And I mean, as a result, I know it just because the examples of like India and South Africa specifically going to ask for, um, dispatches, because what happened?

Um, the waivers and the patents, because what happened after was the various. The variance happened. So alleged allegedly Omnichron is from Southern Africa, deltas from India. And of course the world, the government has just responded by banning the countries and closing their borders.

Again, creating a border qualities were problems. And it's like something that could have been avoided if there was proper vaccine coverage in these countries, if they were able to produce it themselves. And so ultimately did, I mean, did closing the borders even work because yeah, I don't want to corn last week.

Edna: Yeah. Closing the borders even work. And it's like, you're saying we are trying to avoid the situation of like, okay, we're asking for, to manufacture these vaccines in our home country. We avoid the whole thing with the cold chain supply, where you have to figure out all these logistics to ship things to us, that dah, dah, dah, they introduced travel ban, which is not, is going to affect all of those different things again.

So it's very. I just don't understand the line of thinking like on paper, what you are wanting to do and what you say you want to do it, that chief and the targets you have said great. But the actions are not

Jocelyne: you. I don't know. I feel like I'm talking to, I'm telling someone off of like, do

Edna: you realize what you're saying?

Loza: so what I find myself doing when I look at this often, I'm like, yeah, you had great intentions, but like, are you not seeing. It's no good at work. It is not matching and there's no accountability system. If you say, okay, we're going to miss our goal. Uh, canned what, what are you going to do to

Jocelyne: fix it? Yeah, I think that just brings back that, that whole idea behind the interconnectedness in global health, you can have a good idea that they have a great initiative, but it goes to show how much power and political will is.

Ness is required when it comes to, um, Bringing this incentives into action and yeah, this COVID example has shit. That's the lie. I brought that to light. I mean now, what can we do? Like what can we, what can we actually, I don't know. That's why I keep tangible thing. Who, who can we hold accountable and how do we move forward?

It's a bit, it's enough to say that. Yes. There's maximally inequity. Yes. There is conscience of all the blocks into the book. I'll just get the remains, but who do we, who do we out? Who do we come for? Who do we attack? Or let's say. Everybody. That's how I see everybody. Even,

Edna: even these governments of countries, where there are struggling to get to that like higher level of like vaccine coverage, I would hold those governments accountable too.

Cause it's like, yeah, it's not necessarily the responsibility of other countries to ensure you get full coverage things you can do in your own country to have ensure that, for example, you have. Health spending and coverage that you can invest into research and development, invest into local pharmaceutical companies that will be able to look into these things, but you haven't done that yet.

The money disappear in some ways.

Loza: Now these governments, you know who you are,

Jocelyne: um, federals, um, saying that, uh, that countries should maybe, you know, Hold back on getting the third dose screen, get the third door. He recommended it, but no,

Loza: I can't read or hear if it doesn't

Jocelyne: make any sense, because no matter how good your country is doing, we live in a world.

There was globalization. No group can be left behind. People are targeting left or right. Even if the United Kingdom right now is doing amazing, no matter how great you think you're doing. If somebody comes from, I don't know, France or Australia with a new strain and they're not, they don't, but they're not vaccinated as, as required.

Then you, you go back to square one. And then all your efforts are dismissed and then even your cause I know love, and I know you high income countries, you will lie on no and middle income countries for a lot of your friends. If their economy is not good, yours is not good at.

Loza: Well, there's a lot to say about that, but no, it's true.

And I think what arks me about all of this is like, even after all of this vaccine hoarding and everything, it's still projected that over a billion doses will go unused, um, at end of this year. So it's like there, isn't throwing it away.

Edna: Yeah. So that is like a potential watch, like 500 million for doses.

Like. Wow. Is that a waste

Jocelyne: of resources, but

you'll have the finance. We don't have funding. We don't have this. We are worse. We're short, it's fortunate off of equipment shortage of everything. And we're wasting when he could have gone to people that needed for honorable hoops that needed more

Loza: deaths that could have been prevented. And it's going to be brilliant.

No. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's a bit crazy to me because, I mean, if you remember when these countries purchased the vaccines, it was even before they had approved it, that they had ordered ptosis. So I remember Switzerland had purchased it all, like some maternal, some Pfizer, some AstraZeneca, and then at the end they decided they are not even going to approve AstraZeneca anymore.

And then that's when they decided, okay, maybe we're going to donate it to other countries. We'll do kindness.

Jocelyne: How do you take action before deciding, like how do you, how do you say that I'm going to collect everything then decided later?

Loza: Exactly. It just became like a scramble, but became a scramble. And I mean, this is all in context of like when vaccines were even being brought up at the beginning, you know, the French doctor is saying let's tested in Africans.

They're the ones that are going to need it the most. And then now everyone is like Africa. They don't need it. Well, if that seed

Edna: hold them, this is, this is, yeah, this is where I like completely a hundred percent really sure. On the whole, like neo-colonial structure within which we continue to see, see the same thing recurring.

Especially like what you said, where at the big dinning, a lot of like the rhetoric and the way gender, new societies, all these people were talking. It was this whole classic idea of like, oh, Africa is just like the white man's burden. We'll have to deal with Africa or something. So there's more low income countries and we have to save them another.

Then they drafted their whole Kovacs thing. But it's again, like you said, they are, it has to be on their own

Jocelyne: terms.

Loza: And then ultimately comes back to this, like they have the monopoly on health and then we, it ends up being, you know, aid based to global health so that it ends up just being us, hoping on the preying, on the kindness of countries to have vaccines instead of actually being self-reliance.

Exactly. I ultimately have problems with the whole structure. Yeah. And

Edna: then even when you want to rely on their age and all these different things, it comes with conditions. Number one, number two, they're not even

Jocelyne: delivering on it. So they use that to get, to get. Public public attention they use, yes, they do gifts.

Loza: Number of tweets. I will see, but UK donates 1 million faxes has a hundred million people. What are we going to do with your like 3 cents? Keep it. Is that like, it really just becomes so hypocritical and everyone wants to talk about like decolonize global health to be colonized, but like, people need to understand, you literally have to uproot the system and throw it away and start again because this system at the end of the day just continues to create a power imbalance that he keeps saying

Jocelyne: that clearly is a part that it's very clear that.

Yeah.

Edna: So, um, and it's, again, like we touched on in our, what, what was the title of the episode about like universal health coverage, where we talk about, I, again, it's about like, you cannot just say, okay, What do you need to do for all the countries as the same thing, distribute the vaccines in the same way or whatever it may be.

Um, it's again, like we talked about, like, you need to like consider the context of each country being able to actually distribute it in a way that makes sense. It may not be that countries. Let's say South Africa, for example, where we know they have the capacity to actually manufacture some of these items.

So they don't necessarily need these vaccines

Jocelyne: donated

Edna: doses. Maybe it's again about giving that Patrick's giving the recipe or I don't know, sharing. I know, for example, I don't know if you guys know, like for Coca Cola. They don't share the recipe with the one they give like a concentrated amount. And then in the country where, you know, if they finished manufacturing, they just like add water or something to complete.

They

Jocelyne: don't get the

corporation. You know,

Edna: maybe there are countries where it's like, okay, these ones, especially just like deliver them as quickly as possible.

Jocelyne: Yeah. And then I like what you said about the whole equity, the equity bit, because that in, in terms of health, when we, when we want to promote health equity, and we want to make sure that nobody is left behind, and that is, that is, that is a very, very important it's important, but it's, it should be the number one priority because how, how what's the best way for us to use.

Our resources and produce the best results. If you have these number of vaccines that you're distributing it only to the high income countries that are more likely to be well off, then you're not, you're not making, you're not making the best use of your resources. You're not. So we're back to that whole horizontal vertical equity idea of making sure.

That, that, uh, healthcare and healthcare services, including vaccine, vaccine, uh, distribution, it is given on a needs basis. The people that need it most. So if you've already had a baby, you ever, you've been able to deploy, uh, two doses. You've had that. That's fine. Now there are countries that don't even have a single dose, the countries that have a hot also.

Uh, hi aging population, but they don't have those doses cultures. I have other burdens also talking with, I talked with other pandemics or the toxic texting, all the epidemics, like dealing with HIV, dealing with TB, then with different, so many things at the same time. Now on top of that with COVID and jug, they're going to ask you to waive your passes and you're saying, no, come on now.

Loza: Exactly. No, exactly. And that's where, like I hate a based global health, like making the money, like, what is it? The putting the decision in one countries handled like a couple of countries, um, and making others reliant on it. That's ultimately the system and I hate it. And it's not only in the vaccine that you see it.

You know, in the early two thousands, I was with malaria where like so many organizations, again, me, I would want to add a billion, but William and his friends, they, you know, like their, their solution was net nets are great for malaria, but they were just dumping them into the countries. They're just deleting them.

But the countries themselves can make nets. And what I was doing was those countries, the companies that were making nuts and those countries were losing money because that's were just being dumped. So they weren't. Messing up the country's economy and the name of we'll help you and health conscious be self reliant, especially I get, I'm not even staying with patterns for all drugs, like forget intellectual property.

Doesn't matter what I'm saying when there are public health emergency still, when there are pandemics, when there are people's lives are risk, sometimes puts money aside sometimes think ethically, think at the.

Edna: But, yeah, it's also the case that here thinking ethically and thinking in the way that's going to be more in a much more benevolent way going towards the altruistic route will benefit you in the long-term even economically.

So even the case, you could make a case here in that sense. It's not like we're telling you to give away like sacrifice so much. Yes. There's a bit of sacrifice associated, but it's so that you can actually, it's

Jocelyne: also going to benefit. And also it goes, I think I'm kind of thinking back. Think about what the high income countries are trying to achieve here.

Once the profits, the ones, the, the, the, what do you call it? The, the sauce they want to say that yes, we were doing well where the west were well off and everywhere. The statistic that I think for every $1 of vaccine, soul vaccine, dose sold in a low-income country, for those of his men in the Hong Kong. So even if they're selling their vaccines or giving them back them the way they're making that profit back, making it back.

And it goes to show that like a lot of these countries will they'll. I don't know how I'm very impressed, you know, no fight difference tracker just to say, okay, we will find the best way to still take advantage of use to pop it from you and then donate, you will take from you. And then.

Loza: My friend, my friend said, like, we were like, you know, I don't like referring to these countries as low high-income countries.

What do we call them? The global north north. And she was talking about like, let's call them exploiter countries because that's what they are. I like, honestly, that's what it sounded like to me. I think me, I'm going to start saying exploiter and exploited.

No exactly. Um, no, I think, I think we said, what would you say? Are there any burning, burning things you want to add to the globe is anything you want to adjust? Just let us.

Jocelyne: I have a final thing. This is multiple global countries address that misconception that the Google soccer doesn't want vaccines. We never said that we don't want vaccines.

We have highlighted in this episode, that Kovacs was the initial incentive, but we have seen very clearly is that disparity. And most of the time, once boxes are being given to us, there are leftovers. The, we almost

Loza: expired

Jocelyne: exactly. The reason why some countries in Africa, haven't, I'm thinking about canceling as well.

Haven't have been, they been reluctant. I'm being a bit dismissive towards, um, getting vaccines. It's not because they don't want to it's because we've been seen how we're being treated. They don't also don't they don't treat. Um, high-income concept when it comes to handling ballet distribution. So I can't say that I don't want to hear people saying that, oh, low-income black people, low income countries back in my ethnic minorities.

They don't want vaccines, please. Let's let's

Loza: move away. I agree. Cause remember I was making a presentation. Uh, but, um, it's covered vaccines in Ethiopia and the percentage of vaccinated people was so low. I think it was 0.5% of the time. And so a classmate asked me, she was like, oh, is it because there's like such low acceptance of the vaccine now?

I said, girl, no, it's because there is no vaccine

because I was speaking to my grandmother and I was like, oh, like, have you guys had heard anything? No we've given up on the vaccine. There's no vaccine. Like, it's not because people don't want it. Like it is not offered. It's just something they've given up on. Don't give us,

Edna: yeah, the leftovers. And also for me, I think it was as I was also speaking to some people, especially like in Zimbabwe, it was the idea of.

We also want the same vaccines that you are giving you are distributing amongst each other. You know, don't just give us the less effective ones you don't want that we want the same ones equal treatment

Jocelyne: equilibrium. And also whilst I understand that in a lot of, um, low-income countries, they don't have the cup, they sometimes don't have the capacity to, to, to, um, store some of these boxes.

So you would need, I think. I think point worth of reflect

I'm losing my voice. So in that case, yes, like they would, so certain factors the most suitable for low income countries. Yeah. That's where the there's no denying that. We're not saying that everyone gets the same. Boxing's hold up. I'll say everybody getting faxes. No, it's about understanding the needs of the populations or trying to, okay.

This population, they can afford this. No, they're cons. Yes, they come. Okay. We'll distribute Pfizer in this country, the, in this country, and that's on a needs basis, not on a, we don't want an animal. You can have on us

Edna: in this assessment of what is the Eve of the countries.

Jocelyne: Just

Loza: coming with your own solution and be like, this is how you should do it.

Well, did God leave you in charge of earth? Don't even make sense. No,

Jocelyne: they were delegated.

Loza: They said you guys are in charge. Like, no,

Edna: exactly. Like just cooperate on. Don't make it seem like this whole thing of you are here at the top of you just pass down your things down here, too, that everyone knows that the boyfriend, like actually they can seem like it's a collaboration, at least at least make an effort.

Jocelyne: I'm tired of this whole global north global south thing. And exploiter explains it exploited expert, or we really need to come together. And this is not saying this in an inclusive inclusivity way or less involved here and there. No, really. And truly. Puts it all collaborated efforts together, having that multidisciplinary experts, we have bright minds, both in the global north and exactly

Loza: there's ways you can benefit too.

Like it's not everyday global north coming to the global south and saying, look at our ideas. These are great. This is what you should implement. Like an exchange will benefit. Everyone. Corporation will benefit everyone.

Edna: Then. Yeah, no, definitely my message to our government is like, just invest more in health, invest more in our local researchers,

Jocelyne: because we have

Edna: cases where I swear in the team of people who are working for Pfizer, whoever to like help develop that vaccine.

There was a bump when there was the

Jocelyne: talent is being stolen, then they go any way to work.

Edna: In these, uh, in the, in the exploiter countries. Right. And then it's not. Yeah. So part of it is the fortunes, the turn light. There's no environment for us to like, do the research and development for

Jocelyne: ourselves.

Loza: I agree, but I think I'm glad we're talking about this.

And like, I hope the globe has continued to kind of like maintain this conversation because also just being aware that this inequality exists, because I don't hear people talking too much about it outside of global health that like literally half of the majority of the world just does not have access to these vaccines.

And the same structure exists in every other kind of tool that is used in global health. Yeah. And to, I guess, to wrap it up, I just want to finish off with a quote that describes how I feel about this. Again, we've been at seeing Dr. Tedros like normal, not today, but, um, this is, this is something he said, and it really resonated with me because he said I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines, think the world's poor should be satisfied with leftovers.

And it's

Jocelyne: louder for the people in the box. Say it loudly for the pupil.

Loza: I said, I will not be satisfied with leftovers because that's what it is right now. It has become. Them donating leftovers. Um, so skip that all in mind and thank you so much for listening to the world. Health investigation podcast still was our last episode.

Last episode, we're just taking a break. We're taking a break. We'll be

Jocelyne: back watching me back. Better stronger funnier. We actually have so many like topic ideas. We keep telling you, we're going to do part two, some of these. And if there's any burning topics that you want us to talk about, suggested to us, suggested to us.

W we'll plug you. What comment? Absolutely. We want to mention that. No, one's left behind. This

Loza: is a conversation you need to talk back to us too. We want to know. We want to know how you feel. Yeah, absolutely. So, no, thank you so much for listening to our last episode for season one. My name is Loza

Jocelyne: armed Jocelyn, and I'm adding up.

Thank you so

Loza: much for listening to the world cup investigation podcast. Do you want to plug our socials one last time? The joys

Jocelyne: of leaving? Yes. Yes. You told me to go because we'll be back on Instagram. I don't even have on this call with her. I brought you a tie on this core port podcast. You also have a Facebook and Twitter and little bit.

Wild health investigation, please subscribe to our YouTube channel subscribe right now. Spotify. Follow our download. Listen, listen, listen. You're healthier. You can help us. We're going to come back with better quality. Finishing on apple products and has

Loza: a nice one.

Jocelyne: don't be shy. And also if you really have some Brittany topics that you want us to discuss, feel free to email us. We have an emo currently called Walt house investigation at T-Mobile dot com. So if you have any particular inquiries, please put to go on our website as well and contact us. Yeah. Or you can do.

and whatever.

Loza: Perfect. Thank you so much. And good bye for now. .