COVID-19 vaccines and global health diplomacy

Brown, Stephen; Rosier, Morgane

doi:10.4324/9781003273844-13

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Nonetheless, leaders, especially those from high-income countries, failed abysmally to live up to their rhetoric and respond to the pandemic from a global perspective (Brown and Rosier, 2023; Dentico, 2021). Global cooperation had already collapsed in early 2020, when countries sealed their borders and competed savagely for limited supplies of personal protective equipment (Moon et al, 2022: 487).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation

Brown

Rosier

2023

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%