The UK joins a growing number of rich countries offering Covid booster vaccines, whilst across Africa only 3% of people have been vaccinated against the virus. Ros Atkins looks into the issue of vaccine inequity
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
I'm least, pleased set from the BBC world service. I've been reporting from afghanistan for more than thirty years. The americans are now out the taliban in. How did we get here? What happens next hour? Podcast a wish for afghanistan may be able to help search for a wish for afghanistan wherever you get your
casts hello, I'm rosa keynes each week on the BBC world service. I look in detail at one of the biggest stories in the news this week is the ethics of covert boost jobs.
not many people get a round of applause when they get their covert jam
But ninety one year old margaret came in from the uk did she was one of the first in the world to get the fire of accessing back in december of last year. Since then, more than five point, seven billion jobs have been administered and who gets them as being potent and political from the start. Well now, the uk prime minister, Boris Johnson plans to use boost the jobs to stop a winter wave of covert we're gonna be building even higher walls.
Immunization, a vaccine protection in this country. This is in line with other rich countries, including Israel in France, who are already doing it. The? U S has plans to end this scientific justification for using boosters is clear.
this is health sector such a job. It from the uk government is evidence that the protection offered by covered nineteen vaccine reduces overtime, particularly older people, who are greater risk, and so booster doses are an important way of keeping the virus under control for the long term.
That's the objective, but the degree to which immunity decreases is not clear. This is a precautionary tactic,
at a mean. Some we'll get a third job, while others in the world wait for a first, which is
the world health organization once the boost to plan ports,
Make us is knowledge, areas, most populous city, and it's been a real challenge to get twenty million people buxom eat it. So far, twenty received a fraction of the duties it meets with rich nations, buying billions of doses before vaccines that even been approved. There's a lot of concern african countries could struggle to get home.
They doses for their own people. As you can hear in these news reports, these boost to programmes is starting. While the vast majority of people in the developing world have not been vaccinated and the director general of the w h owed
The dross at a norm gave her uses is not mincing his words on this. We do not want to see widespread use of boosters for healthy people would food
vaccinated, we don't want any more promises. We just want the vaccines, the former british prime minister,
brown has also weighed in arguing that the west has more vaccine,
since then it needs and no excuse not to share them. Doktor whitey, ETA, quichua, new coaches, the africa,
Union vaccine delivery alliance agrees when people who have been double jabbed in the uk are at a hundred per cent protected were hearing from death. Seventy five plus eighty five per cent protected from severe illness and disease, but those who haven't had vaccines around the world are hundred percent at risk of dying
Now the richest countries reject this criticism to understand why we need to look at their rejection of the idea that they must choose between their populations and the rest of the world. There is no point in us just vaccinating of uk. Are we to vaccinate woe?
it's boris Johnson at the g seven summit in june. More recently at the u s confirmed, it was looking at boosters white house, spokesperson, Jen psaki, rejected having to choose between vaccinating americans and vaccinating the whole world. We can do both. We announced just yesterday that we hit an important milestone of over one hundred and ten million vaccines donated to the world. That is more than any
other country, has shared combined of course doing it all is everyone's best case scenario, a cake and eat it strategy, but the fact the boost as a coming while facts
Emission rates in the developing world remain low, is leaving some people bemused places to go into people's homes. I think we want to be back season. That's john and kanga song he's director of africa's centers for disease control and prevention, real vaccines, not
pledged vaccines is his demand and to understand the controversy around boost. Is we need to look at once been pledged and what's been delivered? Latest estimates show forty two percent of the global population is received at least one dose in low income. Countries
That figure is one point. Nine percent better. That in mind, when I tell you this calculation from the science analytics company affinity, its found, the western nation
will have more than a billion doses left after their initial vaccine roll out and after the boosters.
that you seven, though, places emphasis not on the vaccines it's got, but on the vaccines its donating, but he's got. A ted rose from the w h show again on what is actually arrived. There has been a lot of talk about vaccine equity, but too little action. I income countries have promised to donate more than a billion dollars, but list
than fifteen percent of those those had been materialised. South Africa's president's your ram oppose, has called what's happening. Vaccine apart side, the most potent of words for south africa to use now
So there are some challenges in africa with administering doses that have been delivered an that manufacturers are struggling to meet demand. This is professor Sarah gilbert, who led the team that develop the extra seneca vaccine the world needs.
greater vaccine supply. We me we need more doses of all the vaccines that are coming in.
And we need more. That seems to be nice and said that we not talking about choices between vaccinated in one country or another country. Of course, more vaccine supply would help, but won't vaccine supply there is is not being equally distributed, which brings us back to the boosters which the uk, the? U s and others are pushing on with, while the benefits of doing so is still being assessed. He's professor gilbert again to get good protection after
single dose and then is improved by second dose, and we would expect to see it being maintained or possibly slightly improved than by a third dose. We wait to see, but getting the first dose into people is really important. That's right. Immunity will be possibly slightly improved,
booster, other scientists, say the evidence, doesn't support boosters for a general population, those a to sign
epic assessments? Here's another one from england's chief medical officer, professor chris
But he is there some way of immunity. That means that a third day, sir, these two days is a sensible thing to do, and I think there is now a reasonably good evidence of that.
is the case as we are hearing this scientific advice for and against using boosters now, and what we consider that. That's remember that throughout this pandemic, the w h show and the g seven have repeatedly committed to a global response. They ve told us
This is the only way we heard it from Boris johnson earlier he's another example from doktor richard me: he go. The w h show in africa. He spoke to the baby. Sees africa daily. Podcast trade communication make people travel. A lot saw. What was true friend he thirty years ago is the true anymore, and this is why
The global solidarity become something very important today, but are we seeing global solidarity? Have we re
Move beyond national considerations, as I watched the world's richest countries defend their approach to boosters doktor ted rossiya famous phrase keeps coming to mind. None of us are safe until all of us,
safe in reality. This is an argument about the route you take to that point. It's about the order in which things happen. It's about priorities, and this week, as the uk boost a plan was announced, england's deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan van time, a man famed phase metaphors gave us the new one, it's better to put some extra guy ropes on there and then than it is
wait until it's. The middle of the night is howling with wind and rain, and you think I'd get out your tent and make your tent secure by the time he crawled back in his soaking wet.
Ways that, while the uk add some extra guy ropes, many in the developing world, don't have a tent, that's in part because of choices being made by rich countries, and it's not to pass judgement to acknowledge that. As the boosters begin, that choice has been taken. Thank you for listening. There will be more from the document she podcast.
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Transcript generated on 2023-07-05.