Please register here!

With half a dozen Covid-19 vaccines now approved or on the verge of being approved for widespread use, the question of access, including global access, to immunization is becoming more and more visible as we see more and more people in the Global North rolling up their sleeves. That non-white people are less likely to be doing the same comes as no surprise, but efforts to address it should come as no surprise either. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in fact since long before, scholars, policy makers, and health care workers around the world have been arguing for global health equity.

On the one hand, equity in Covid vaccination will require local solutions. It will require continental, national, and regional distribution networks as well as innovation and ingenuity from all parties involved. On the other hand, it will require a high level international framework and multilateral commitment to purchasing, manufacturing, allocating, and distributing the vaccines that will restore global health and the global economy. In this panel, we’ll explore those international and infrastructural approaches that can threaten or ease the problem of inequity both during and after the pandemic.

Some of the threats and some of the opportunities our panelists will address:

Evaborhene Aghogho Nelson has written about the threat of vaccine nationalism and the need to invest in the African economy and African health systems.

Dr. Irene Torres has discussed the limitations of Covax and the need to reimagine the WHO.

Dr. Nicole Hassoun has written about Covax, a multilateral initiative led by the WHO to assure equitable access to vaccines. She has also written about the need to overhaul Big Pharma.