Vaccine apartheid and the limited geographies of alternatives in extending care

Keywords: COVID, neoliberalism, care, charity, vaccines
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 5

Abstract

Global access to COVID vaccines is extraordinarily unequal and presents one of the biggest health injustices of the pandemic. Described by African leaders who have seen their countries cut off from access as 'vaccine apartheid', the exclusionary outcomes have also been condemned in the UN as 'a moral indictment of the state of our world'. There have nevertheless been at least three significant global responses to the injustices in access and the resulting inequalities in vulnerability. These are reviewed and assessed in this paper in the terms of 'Vaccine Diplomacy', 'Vaccine Charity', and 'Vaccine Liberty'. Vaccine Diplomacy includes the diverse bilateral deliveries of vaccines organized by the geopolitical considerations of countries seeking various kinds of global and regional advantages in international relations. Vaccine Charity centrally involves the humanitarian work of the global health agencies that have organized the COVAX program as an antidote to inaccess, but which have also thereby effectively immunised the global vaccine supply system from more radical demands for technological transfer and compulsory licensing of vaccine platform intellectual property (IP). These more radical demands represent the third alternative to vaccine apartheid. As a mix of grassroots, NGO-led and politician-led social justice demands, they are diverse and multifaceted, but together they have been articulated as calls for Vaccine Liberty. In conclusion it is argued that the challenges of vaccine access can only be adequately addressed if we consider how the interactions of alternatives end up rationing access in geographically exclusionary ways.