WTM London: International vaccination efforts falling short for developing world
Tom ParryWorld leaders have “fallen short” and not created a coherent approach to supplying Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries – risking not only the tourism recovery of those nations but the resurgence of new variants.
That was the assessment of a panel of health, tourism and political experts speaking at the International Tourism and Investment Conference on Monday (1 November) during WTM London, which slammed the world’s richest countries for not giving enough help to poorer nations.
Elena Kountoura, a member of the European Parliament and ex-Greek minister of tourism, said “an enormous vaccination gap” had been allowed to open during the pandemic between highly vaccinated destinations – such as the UK, EU and US – and other regions like Africa.
She called for greater transparency from pharmaceutical companies over vaccine production and for developing nations to be given greater access to vaccine development capabilities.
“Only about a dozen nations currently have the ability to develop Covid vaccines; nobody can be safe until everyone is safe,” she said.
Speaking alongside Kountoura, Taleb Rifai, former secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, said Africa “should not be discriminated against” for its currently low level of vaccination.
“We can’t treat Africa like an isolated island – we can’t treat the world as two worlds,” he said, advocating faster and cheaper testing to allow tourism to the continent to continue while rates increased.
Agreeing with Rifai, Denis Kinane, co-founder and chief medical officer at health and logistics specialist Cignpost, Diagnostics said the technology to produce vaccines could be transported and developed in Africa, although he admitted it was down to the pharmaceutical firms to drive that.
Kinane said he believed that “morally” pharmaceutical firms had a larger role to play.
“Vaccine and testing companies – including us – have made a lot of money and should really be asking what else they can be doing.”
Cuthbert Ncube, chair of the African Tourism Board, said a “global response to fix a global pandemic” was needed.
“We talk so much about globalisation but that hasn’t been the case [during the pandemic],” he said, calling on African nations to cooperate with each other to “end our dependence” on assistance from overseas nations.
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