Keep politics at bay

Many countries in the European Unions, including France, Norway Bulgaria and Germany, have stopped the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, on the grounds that it leads to blood clotting and may be unsafe for some age categories. Nevertheless, Britain has innoculated 24 million citizens with it. The plan is to vaccinate five million citizens per week in the near future. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has however, opined that innoculation with the Oxford vaccine should continue. This vaccine is being used widely across the world, including India.

WHO should have the final say in authorising any vaccine. If every country starts opining on every vaccine, we could have a crisis of confidence and confusion.

The vaccination effort across the world should not get politicised in any way. All decisions are made on pure merit. It will be a horrendous shame, if nations start deploying the vaccines for political arm-twisting or scoring brownie points. People are dying due to the disease. The first priority should be to save human lives. Politics, can wait.

This is also the time for nations like Brazil, Colombia, etc., in Latin America and Kenya and Nigeria, etc., in Africa to invest in plants to manufacture vaccines. Then, they will not be dependent on other countries, in case of another pandemic in the future.

Rajendra Aneja
Mumbai, India