Now, one of the arguments being put forward to back that claim is thea amount of surplus vaccine being bought by wealthy countries.

Some estimates suggest they have pre ordered enough to vaccinate their entire populations three times over, making it, of course, that much harder for everyone else.

Toe access them well.

Heidi Chow is with global justice now one of the organizations campaigning on the issue for People's Co vid alliance.

Heidi, thank you very much for joining us.

Um, there are some arguments for having mawr doses than you have people because we don't know necessarily the efficacy of all of these vaccinations on.

And, of course, the rate at which they'll come in.

Is that a fair argument?

Good morning.

Yeah.

Thank you for having me on.

Yes.

So the People's Vaccine Alliance is a global alliance of campaigners and organizations, and we are saying that we're seeing this gaping inequality and access to vaccines.

So, like you said, where we might have in high income countries ability to vaccinate our populations three times over.

There are many countries in the world, um, especially the poorest countries in the world, which are left with virtually very little or none.

But but I suppose the point I'm making is that we don't yet know about the efficacy of all of these different vaccines on.

We don't actually yet know about the delivery either.

So isn't that one of the reasons why governments are over ordering that the governments that are over ordering are actually the high income countries that are over ordering?

Actually, low and middle income countries have struggled to access any of the vaccine doses a tall because most of it has been hoarded by high income countries on the time of a global pandemic.

Instead of having most of the doses spoken for by high income countries, we should be actually working together collaboratively to ensure that there is a fair allocation for vulnerable groups allow at risk groups in whichever country they live in.

This is not just a solidarity on fairness argument.

It's also a public health argument because actually, when you leave vulnerable groups unvaccinated in whichever country they live in a week.

We get to see that the continued disruption to public health systems on and two economies.

Yeah, of course it should.

The criteria then be how badly affected any individual country is if it's gonna be a level playing field.

I think there are two issues here.

The first is how do we allocate the initial supplies that we have in the world today?

Andi, we need We need countries to work together to Thio agree on the priorities for fair global allocation.

But the more bigger issue and the more structural issue is how do we actually increase the level off off vaccine supplies?

Because we've seen this level of hoarding because we're faced with a scarcity problem.

The world can't produce enough of pretty produce enough doses because the companies that are developing these vaccines hold the patents, the intellectual property on the technological know how on so essentially, these companies have a monopoly on DSO.

We have a monopoly situation and during a time of global crisis, very briefly.

Do you have much optimism that that's something better can be achieved because there's been plenty of talk about working for everyone together very briefly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is a proposal at the World Trade Organization that's being discussed this week to actually suspend pattern rules during the pandemic.

Fork over 19 vaccines and treatment as a recognition that during this global crisis, every country should have a fair shot accessing the vaccines and the treatment that they need to get out of this pandemic together.

Okay.

Heidi Chow.

Thank you very much indeed.