Beyond Vaccine Nationalism: Advancing ethically-coherent policy action for equitable responses to inherently global health crises
More than a year into a global pandemic, people around the world continue to experience the burdens and costs of COVID‑19 in unfair and unequal ways. Vaccine nationalism involves (mostly rich) countries taking steps to protect their own citizens’ access to vaccines. Vaccines remain scarce because of many factors that limit global capacity to manufacture and distribute enough to reach every person who needs it. Many wealthy countries talk about their desire to end the pandemic as soon as possible, but their efforts to protect their own populations added to this scarcity-leaving poorer countries behind. The mismatch between what wealthy countries say they stand for and what they actually do is contributing to even more unfair working and living conditions for the world’s poorest populations. This project will bring experts in equity, ethics, policy, and practice together to understand how we can generate fairer global policy solutions that balance the interests and needs of populations around the world. Rather than leaving some people behind, this project will generate learning tools and policy recommendations that can support policy and practice responses that enable all people to move forward to a global pandemic recovery, together. Importantly, what we learn in this project will offer insights and tools that can help us respond to future global health crises.
