Photographer: Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty Images
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Some of South Africa’s top medical and academic leaders have called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire government officials for delays in procuring Covid-19 vaccines, saying their actions would cause thousands of deaths and untold economic damage.
The request was made in an opinion piece run by News24, the country’s largest Internet news site, and signed by nine people, including Glenda Gray, chair of the South African Medical Research Council and officials from other organizations. health, hospitals and universities.
While at least 29 countries, from Mexico to Germany, have begun inoculating their populations against the virus, South Africa has not yet reached an agreement for direct supply to pharmaceutical companies. The country has ordered vaccines from the Covax facility, an initiative designed to ensure equitable access to vaccines, but they will cover only 10% of the population of about 60 million and will arrive in the second quarter of the year. Even then, a charity filed the deposit after the government missed a deadline, which it announced.
Failure to procure vaccines is an “unforgivable failure, which will be measured in lives lost in thousands of people, tens of thousands of diseases, a failed health care system and deep and continuing economic damage,” said leaders. health and academics in the opinion article. Ramaphosa will have to “wield the ax against the members and officials of his administration who are responsible for this dangerous fiasco and immediately commit to correcting the course.”
For South Africa’s progress in vaccine procurement, click here
Ramaphosa’s spokesman Tyrone Seale said he could comment after the presidency reviewed the article. The Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
South Africa, with over 1.09 million confirmed Covid-19 infections and 29,175 deaths, is the most affected country on the African continent. Its economy probably contracted the most in nine decades last year, according to government estimates.
Criticism is compounded by attacks on the vaccination strategy by opposition parties, as well as the country’s largest unions, which are allied with the ruling party.
With the largest HIV epidemic in the world and hundreds of thousands of people suffering from tuberculosis, South Africa has a sophisticated health system, with world-leading scientists. At least three Covid-19 vaccine studies are underway in the country and Johnson & Johnson has agreed to have 300 million Covid-19 vaccines in one Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. factory in the country when the shooting is approved.
For the progress of global inoculations, click here
“Public recognition by officials that they do not think it is prudent to start bilateral negotiations with vaccine suppliers, as they could not ‘risk’ ordering vaccines if they do not work is shockingly unimportant,” the leaders said. in the field of health.
They also criticized the so-called ministerial advisory committee, a group of scientists appointed by health minister Zweli Mkhize, for failing the government’s arguments.
Gray and Francois Venter, an academic who signed the opinion piece, were removed from the committee last year by Mkhize. Both have previously criticized the government’s approach to the virus.
(Updates infections, deaths in the sixth paragraph)