India once again comes to the rescue of the human race in the fight against the Chinese Corona Virus (COVID-19).
The World Health Organization (WHO)’s COVAX facility will get 150 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines from India’s Serum Institute of India (SII) and AstraZeneca.These vaccines will be made in India and donated at free of cost. The cost will be sponsored by the Indian government. India has once again comes to the rescue of human race.
India already has agreed to supply more than one billion coronavirus vaccines to various countries and to the World Health Organization-backed Covax initiative aimed at poorer countries. India is currently manufacturing two vaccines — the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, known in India as Covishield, and Covaxin, developed by the Indian pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech. Three other Indian companies are close to wrapping up development of their own vaccines.
Large parts of the world are still reeling from the spread of the coronavirus, with renewed lockdowns in effect in many places. With every stricken country focused on tackling its COVID-19 crisis, there is little international generosity in donating large quantities of medicines or vaccines when demand for them is sky-high.
So, when India in recent days delivered millions of COVID-19 vaccines as gifts to countries in the Indian Ocean region, it attracted international attention.
GAVI or global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization was created in 2000 & aims to give equal access to vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries. Under covax facility, aim is equitable distribution of covid vaccines & accelerate development of vaccines.
China, while exploiting its pharmaceutical clout for commercial ends throughout the pandemic, has thus far announced only modest vaccine donations. Its aggressive push to sell vaccines to developing nations, however, has suffered a setback after its leading inoculation candidate turned out to be just 50% effective in late-stage trials in Brazil. Indeed, Brazil has turned to India, importing 2 million vaccines in recent days.
More than 5 million Indian-made vaccines were airlifted last week to countries extending from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Mauritius and the Seychelles. And millions of more free vaccines are on their way this week.
The scale of India’s vaccine gifts is unrivaled. No other country has delivered millions of free vaccines to other nations — not even China, which has pursued its own vaccine diplomacy in a bid to repair the damage to its global image from the spread of the deadly coronavirus from Chinese soil. The gifts help to highlight India’s enormous vaccine-manufacturing capacity.
What stands out the most about India’s humanitarian gesture is that it was launched just four days after the country began vaccinating its own citizens, starting with health care workers. On receiving the first shipment of Indian vaccines, the prime minister of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan called it “altruism” that “precious commodities are shared even before meeting your own needs.” The overseas vaccine shipments extend from India’s ambitious plan to inoculate its huge 1.3 billion population in one of the world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination drives.
Source : Indian Top Journalist Sidhant Sibal, Japan Times, WHO, Wikipedia, Indian government Covid Response team, our research team of IFE News Network.
