The G7 must act to end 'vaccine apartheid' or everyone in the world will suffer | Rowan Williams

Future generations will condemn the richest countries if they don’t use their power to make vaccines universally available

  • Rowan Williams is the chair of Christian Aid and a former archbishop of Canterbury

Until the later part of the 19th century, what we regard today as the fundamentals of public health were mostly unknown. Clean water and public sanitation systems in cities, access to basic professional support for women in childbirth, hygiene in hospitals and operating theatres – all these and many more such provisions took time to arrive on the scene in Europe and North America, and it often took a disastrous epidemic, or a massive loss of life that could be correlated with the lack of these provisions, to spur reformers and governments to take the necessary measures.

Future generations will look back with incredulity at our failure so far to do what is necessary for global public health in the course of this pandemic. We know that certain groups, such as frontline workers and those forced to live in overcrowded housing, are made more vulnerable to infection. But as the tragic scenes in India right now demonstrate, the virus fundamentally is blind to politics, class, race or geography. Like the climate crisis, it does not read maps or need passports. Piecemeal response is ineffectual and the idea that certain enclaves can simply throw up walls around themselves is fantasy. If the bitter struggles and confusions of the past 13 months have shown us anything, surely they have shown us this.

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Coronavirus | The Guardian

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