Vaccine Equity Q&A With Industry Experts - Recap

This past week the Vaccine Equity Project held a Q&A with a panel of international development experts. Our Panelists included Dr Huish, Dr Robyn Waites, and Sabrina Grover

Dr. Huish is a professor in the department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University. He teaches the IDS course Global Health and Pandemic! and is the host of The Global Development Primer. He obtained his Ph. D from Simon Fraser University. His research interests include global health equity and the role of social justice through South-South cooperation in improving provision of health care in resource-poor settings.

Dr. Robyn Waite is currently the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Results Canada, as well as the Project Lead for Stop TB Canada. She is an experienced global health practitioner with strong project management, research, policy analysis, and advocacy skills. Robyn holds of a BSc in Health Promotion from Dalhousie University; a Graduate Diploma from the United Nations University - Institute for Water, Environment and Health; an MSc in Global Health from McMaster University; and a PhD in International Development Studies from SOAS, University of London.

Sabrina Grover is an experienced advocacy, policy and communications professional who has worked extensively with civil society and non-profit organizations both in the Canadian and international contexts. This work has included advocacy for gender equality through improved nutrition for women and girls, as well as around advocacy for participation and inclusion of women in democratic and political processes. Most recently she has been worked with Canada's international development sector on pushing forward Canada's commitments and investments to global vaccine equity and the ACT-Accelerator.

Questions

Our experts explained that vaccine equity would mean that everyone has access to necessary vaccines regardless of global south or global north, which as Dr Waite described as “definitely not the situation”. Dr Waite goes further to say the main variable missing in global vaccine equity is low resource countries getting enough vaccines from vaccine hoarding resource flush nations. Moving along from the definition of vaccine equity our experts described brought up two systems but in place - Covax and the ACT-Accelerator. These two programs were meant to provide vaccines to at risk countries and anyone in need. Our panelists outlined that these programs were started with good intentions but the execution was poor due to rich countries making deals with vaccine manufacturers that gave them first “dibs” on majority of the vaccines produced.

Dr Huish explains that much of the issue around vaccine equity revolves around the distribution and shipping, with Sabrina Grover stating that "we have enough vaccines, we just dont have to systems in place to distribute them. Dr Huish goes on to explain how vaccines and well as many of medical products are manufatured for the use of Global North countries that have proper storage and care facilities. Many global South countries dont have the proper facilites to store vaccines so a high percectage of the vacines they receive expire for being distributed to the people.

When asked about Canadas response to Covid 19 our experts pointed out that Canada was one of the first countries to sign on to the ACT-Accelerator, but were also quick to say Canada hase defiently not done enough. The Experts said that Canada had made alot of strong promises but failed it the exucution of these promises and are behind on many of their target goals in aiding other countries. Canada has also apposed signing the TRIPS waiver which would allow for the production COVID vaccines by countries stuggling to get their hands on enoug for their population.