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The Evidence

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Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore science’s effect on our world

Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore the effect science has on the world around us

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The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence: Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong?

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Coronavirus: The Evidence

29/05/2021 GMT

Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong?

BBC World Service - The Evidence, Coronavirus: The Evidence, Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong?Search BBC

The ethics of putting children in rich countries ahead in the global vaccine queue

As rich countries vaccinate their children, those at highest risk in low income countries are told they have no chance of a vaccine anytime soon.

The lofty ambition of the global community was that across the globe, those with the highest risk of losing their lives to this virus should be vaccinated first. With 99% of deaths coming in the over fifties, the plan was that everybody in this age group should be inoculated.

But that’s not what has happened. Vaccine supply is in crisis and in Africa, a continent of over 1.2 billion people, only around 20 million Africans have been vaccinated, with only 35 million vaccines landing so far on the continent.

It’s been called “vaccine apartheid” and “a moral outrage” but as South Asia and South America find themselves again, in the eye of the virus storm, largely unvaccinated Africa fears the next wave is heading for them.

Can vaccine nationalism be overcome and scare supply be fairly distributed?

It’s a question that very much concerns Claudia Hammond’s expert panel: Gagandeep Kang, Professor of Microbiology at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, Dr Yodi Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance for Covid-19, Professor Andy Pollard from the Oxford Vaccine Group who led the clinical trials for the Oxford/Astra Zeneca (or Covishield) Vaccine and Professor Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development in the USA. 
Produced by: Fiona Hill, Hannah Fisher and Maria Simons
Studio Engineers: Jackie Marjoram and Tim Heffer

Picture: Vaccination, India, Credit: Hindustan Times/Getty Images

The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence

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Claudia Hammond is joined by experts to answer questions about the coronavirus Covid-19.

In The Evidence Claudia Hammond is joined by an expert scientific panel to answer questions from the audience on a variety of aspects of the coronavirus and Covid 19, from the impact of lockdowns and self isolation on the spread of the disease, to the question of who should be tested and the search for treatments. 
Professor Vivek Jha, Executive Director, of the George Institute for Global Health, India, talks about the situation in his country where a lockdown was announced four hours before it began.

Dr Lyndsey Broadbent, a virologist at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, explains what is now known about the biology of the virus and why it causes serious disease in some people and no symptoms in others. 
Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist from St Andrews University, discusses the issue of stigma that’s being experienced by some people who have had Covid-19. 

Claudia also hears from a psychiatrist at the University of Verona in northern Italy, which has taken the brunt of cases in the country about some of the most serious consequences for doctors and nurses, and the general population.

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