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De Montfort University
The Pandemic is one crisis that brought all of the world together in order to fight a horrendous calamity. For these past few years, ever since the Pandemic has become a part of the human life, the world has become a weird place, on one hand there are people and countries who have been helping out those who do not have enough resources to fight this crisis, and on the other hand, the most-evil occupants of the world are coming out in light. Reports have shown that amid this moment of crisis, some countries have selfishly decided to hoard all the resources and vaccines beforehand so that their citizens do not face any kind of problem, but it is imperative to notice here that these countries are the one that come under the countries with the highest income globally and still represent only about 14% of the entire world’s population. This report will conduct a thorough research and evaluate how the practice of Vaccine reservation affected the low-income countries. The report will also analyze the repercussions that followed this unethical practice (So & Woo, 2020).
A report published in the year 2021 stated that around 51% of the doses of vaccine were secured by the high-income countries, leaving the developing countries that represent the middle and lower classes of society, countries which comprise of about 86% of the human population, with only half of the existing vaccines. This process of reservation of vaccine continued throughout the Pandemic, where countries did not shy away from letting human lives be lost in order to hoard the vaccines in bulk (Kuehn, 2021).
This practice shows an inherent moral inability of countries to honor their moral obligation towards maintaining health standards of the entire human population. A committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights had even publicly urged the more developed states to help out those countries and their citizens who are in dire need of the vaccination doses (Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 2021).
Critics have also started this extremely unethical practice as ‘vaccine nationalism’, the shameless scrambling among nations in order to get their hands on the vaccination dosed and to hoard them rather delivering to those in need, shows the extent to which human beings have fallen morally and ethically. This entire practice has once again raised the questions of inequality and discrimination on the basis of income, something that the citizens of the developing nations have been suffering from for centuries now (Stark, 2021). The way in which this practice takes place is that the high-income countries place humongous order for vaccination doses even before they are manufactured, making them the legal receivers of the doses. This unethical practice does not even give the developing nations a chance to avail the resources that could help them acquiring the doses.
This entire process of getting a nation’s citizens vaccinated has become a race, a bloody race in which thousands of lives are lost just because some people are selfish enough to witness mass deaths due to the lack of vaccines but are not selfless enough to help and reach out to those in need. This has led to the rise of questions regarding a ‘cure’ for nationalism, nationalism that is veiled in a thin garb of patriotism, nationalism that is deeply soaked in money and the acquisition of resources, nationalism that is alive only when it comes to snatching something extremely essential from another nation (Rutschman, 2021).
With the dreadful expansion of the covid-19 crisis, the vaccine became something essential, initially only adults of a certain age were eligible for the vaccination process, but, as the disease started engulfing the entire world with extreme rage, the world started realizing that those who had weaker immune systems were also getting affected by the disease, and for them, this crisis was proving to be even more harmful as they did not have the monetary as well as the physical resources to fight the virus, this led to the World Health Organization realizing that a step needs to be taken in order to prevent the loss of human lives. A creation of vaccination for the young as well as the older generation took place, but the issue of hoarding the doses increased severely with this. As per the control strategy, created for the covid-19 crisis, high income countries started considering vaccination for children but, there were some inherent issues with this practice, the ethical, moral and scientific as well as the monetary obligations that prevented the developing nations to acquire the vaccine amid financial crisis proved to be harmful for many developing nations (Duan, et al., 2021). Studies revealed that there was no concrete way to follow and understand the transmission of virus through kids, but there were many reports of community transfer of the virus through adults, this proved that it was imperative that the adults of the world be fully vaccinated before the process starts incorporating children (Li, et al., 2021).
Reports have shown that the pharmaceutical market is being cornered by rich, which inevitably leads to shortage of doses in developing nations, World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly raised this concern in various committee and concerned leaders have been constantly trying to come up with some solution to stop this unethical practice (Burki, 2021).
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Rights specifically mentioned the right to health and a standard of living that should be maintained throughout the globe. It was recognized as a human right in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in the year 1966. It is a fundamental part of the human rights and before the crisis of the covid-19 Pandemic, it was rarely breached in a such a global as well as horrendous manner. In the more recent years, the adequate standard of living and right to health is being given importance and an increased amount of attention is being paid to continue the standard of living in a proper manner by the WHO (Tobin, 2012).
Studies have revealed that the Right to Health can be encompassed in the politics of life as the pandemic has given rise to what Michel Foucault referred to as, ‘biopolitics’. Political conditioning and Political tactics have become a way of living in the recent years but after the Pandemic, this aspect found another outlet (Siisiäinen, 2018). The Foucauldian biopolitical strategy stats that it is a concept that incorporates the basic mindset of ‘letting human beings die’. Foucault had identified and mentioned that the world has crossed the threshold of biological modernity and no the human lives are being treated as a species that have become extremely essential to the central issues of the world, hence, the various political, social, cultural and biological aspects and decisions of the world are now being made in accordance with this modernity, where human lives are of extreme importance and at the same time, entirely disposable if they do not benefit the causes of the powerful classes (Pele & Riley, 2021). The Right to Health clearly state that an individual can demand resources from the state in case of lack of resources. This power circulation and its immense inequality affects the society on every level. This new discourse that has taken place after the Pandemic, the discourse of a biopolitical approach towards fellow human beings is immensely saddening as well as life-threatening (Lorenzini, 2021).
Reports have repeatedly stated that the response to the various actions taken in order to provide vaccination to the nations with low income and middle income, has been very underwhelming. There have been reports revealing that in many countries the death rate has been increasingly higher among indigenous people and families, people who are racial minority, people with low income, prisoners and detainees. Under such circumstances, the factor of prioritizing the rich also takes place, for instance, there have been cases in south-east Asia where the lives of thousands of migrant workers have not been prioritized over a handful of rich and privileged people. These lives have been lost in order to place the handful of people who are in power and who can easily affect an entire world’s government because of the power that their money asserts. When the Pandemic was at its peak, the privileged section of the society was seen to be coming together virtually and yelling that ‘all of us are in this together’, but as soon as that conversation ended, the world was still the same, even months after that it was the exact same, where the globally wealthy and privileged were hoarding all the resources in their comfortable bedrooms and shouting that it will all be alright one day, the world just needed to be more brave, while migrant workers in developing nations and minorities were fighting everyday to acquire some resources and save their entire families in some way or another (Beyrer, et al., 2021).
The molding of Human Rights that is taking place amid the pandemic is sickening. If the fundamental human rights of individuals are at stake in the current scenario, Critics wonder to what extent this will continue. This constant endangerment of fundamental human rights in this present society poses a serious threat at the future of these fundamental rights (Tsaousis, 2021). While the Right to Health act had clearly stated that there should be public accessibility to medicines when it comes to multidimensional problems. There have been instances wherein the act was completely ripped apart (Desierto, 2021). Public health experts have severely criticized the practice of government and political leaders of specific nation trying to monopolize and taking actions in order to provide their own citizens or population with excessive resources and a privileged access to the vaccine doses ahead of other nations.
During the Pandemic, another unusual and unethical practice was detected taking place through leaders of nations where they bid higher prices and offered comparatively more resources and benefits to pharmaceutical manufacturers, since the manufacturing of vaccines is never done in an excessive manner, because of this immoral practice, the quantity of vaccine that was initially produced was undertaken by the high income nations and the low income nations were left with very little amount of doses, if any. Reports have revealed that while this practice is taking place on a larger level, it is nothing new. In the past when drugs against HIV appeared, countries with high income exhibited exactly similar behavior. At that time, the developed nations secured excessive amount of drugs for their own well being and when they realized that profit can be assured by marketing these drugs to the developing nations, the nations that were in dire need of the drugs, they started regulating the drugs, but it must be kept in mind that this process took place when the leaders of developed countries realized that they could profit off of the miseries of others. The risks that arise out of this vaccine nationalism are numerous, the most horrendous ones of them being the probability of development of new variants of the virus due to the utter ignorance and negligence that is a part of this process.
Undeniably so, there have been attempts to figure out a way around this and there have been nations and committees, as well as the World Health Organization, who are taking every possible step in order to regulate the vaccine in low-income countries. Amid all of this chaos, some new alliances of European countries as well as the COVAX alliance emerged in order to help out the developing nations wit their vaccine related issues, at the same time, WHO also launched an initiative to form an alliance and bring together national governments and international organizations. But Researchers believe that a better way can be constructed around the issues regarding vaccine reservation and that the global governments should work towards resolving these issues in a more active manner (GRUSZCZYNSKI & WU, 2021).
In conclusion, it can be stated that the unethical practice of Vaccine reservation has led to some extremely dire consequences, and the practice has also helped in identifying the evils of human population. After a thorough evaluation, it can be concluded that in the chaos of Pandemic, fundamental human rights were breached by international political leaders. This paper also analyzed how wealth and privilege play a huge role in the present economy. It can also be concluded that Foucault’s concept of biopolitics is still extremely relevant to the society. The findings of this paper conclude that even though the governments and various organizations have tried resolving the issue of Vaccine reservation by high income countries, the problem is still far from being resolved.
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