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COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation
The equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the most important tests of global cooperation that the world has faced in recent decades. Collectively, global leaders failed that crucible abysmally, creating a ‘vaccine apartheid’ that divided the world according to income into countries w...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10265252/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178248 |
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author | Brown, Stephen Rosier, Morgane |
author_facet | Brown, Stephen Rosier, Morgane |
author_sort | Brown, Stephen |
collection | PubMed |
description | The equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the most important tests of global cooperation that the world has faced in recent decades. Collectively, global leaders failed that crucible abysmally, creating a ‘vaccine apartheid’ that divided the world according to income into countries with widespread access and those without. Why, given that leaders were fully aware of the risks and injustice of vaccine inequity, did governments of wealthy countries hoard doses, impede the expansion of vaccine manufacturing and otherwise prevent equitable access to vaccines? We argue that their decisions to act selfishly are best explained by governments’ accountability to domestic constituencies, their lack of leadership and commitment to multilateralism and their adoption of short-term perspectives, as well as their unwillingness to curb the influence of profit-oriented global pharmaceutical companies and, to a certain extent, of an additional private actor, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10265252 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-102652522023-06-16 COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation Brown, Stephen Rosier, Morgane Br J Polit Int Relat Special Section: The Global Politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic The equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the most important tests of global cooperation that the world has faced in recent decades. Collectively, global leaders failed that crucible abysmally, creating a ‘vaccine apartheid’ that divided the world according to income into countries with widespread access and those without. Why, given that leaders were fully aware of the risks and injustice of vaccine inequity, did governments of wealthy countries hoard doses, impede the expansion of vaccine manufacturing and otherwise prevent equitable access to vaccines? We argue that their decisions to act selfishly are best explained by governments’ accountability to domestic constituencies, their lack of leadership and commitment to multilateralism and their adoption of short-term perspectives, as well as their unwillingness to curb the influence of profit-oriented global pharmaceutical companies and, to a certain extent, of an additional private actor, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. SAGE Publications 2023-06-13 2023-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10265252/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178248 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Special Section: The Global Politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic Brown, Stephen Rosier, Morgane COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title | COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title_full | COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title_fullStr | COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title_full_unstemmed | COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title_short | COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
title_sort | covid-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation |
topic | Special Section: The Global Politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10265252/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178248 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT brownstephen covid19vaccineapartheidandthefailureofglobalcooperation AT rosiermorgane covid19vaccineapartheidandthefailureofglobalcooperation |