CAPE TOWN - As if being clobbered by yet another Covid-19 variant, Omicron, is not enough, once again South Africa, where only 24% of the population is fully vaccinated, is bearing the brunt of a new wave of infections, especially in Gauteng.
Never mind the new wave of infections in Britain, Germany, Switzerland and India, etc. That southern African countries have been subjected to international opprobrium and slapped with arbitrary travel bans is as misplaced as it is ill-informed.
“The resurgence of the pandemic and the latest variant, Omicron,” warns the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “have sharply increased uncertainty around global economic prospects.”
South Africa’s world-class scientists have received plaudits for identifying and sequencing Omicron, a wily mutating pathogen with an in-built biological intelligence armed with a highly transmissible re-infection ability, already detected in 30 countries, including people catching Covid multiple times, and the potential ability to bypass vaccine-derived host immunity.
Omicron has had 32 mutations and if it mutates further, it could spread even faster.
Real world data on Omicron is slowly emerging and scientists are scrambling to understand this latest biological threat.
Reports suggest that Omicron may not have originated in southern Africa after all, instead ‘imported’ only to be first identified there.
Thanks to a combination of vaccine nationalism, inequality, hoarding and price manipulation by some big pharmas, the rich countries have built up high levels of natural immunity from infection.
South African scientists, such as Professor Juliet Pulliam of Stellenbosch University and some British colleagues, "cannot make any assessment of whether Omicron also evades vaccine-derived immunity" because of a lack of data, and if it did so, to what degree?
The damning reality of vaccine inequality is best exposed by a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report stating that only 27% of health workers in Africa have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, leaving the bulk of the front line workforces against the pandemic unprotected.
In contrast, a WHO global study of 22 mostly high-income countries revealed that over 80% of their health and care workers were fully vaccinated.
“Unless our doctors, nurses and other front line workers get full protection we risk a blowback in the efforts to curb this disease. We must ensure our health facilities are safe working environments,” warns Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa.
The world has sleepwalked into a global health crisis in the last two decades due to policy dysfunction and chronic underinvestment in healthcare systems, exacerbated by procurement corruption, part privatisation of health care, especially through ill-negotiated private-public partnerships and a lack of funds for educating the next generations of doctors, nurses and allied staff, from which it will take years to extricate.
Omicron’s ascendancy in South Africa is complicated by the country’s dubious distinction of having the world’s highest incidence of HIV infections, and the high rate of vaccine hesitancy driven by a hubristic but small libertarian activism against compulsory vaccination, against the interest of the greater good.
Spare a thought for South Africans at the mercy of the forgotten pandemics of HIV and malaria. Data from WHO’s World Malaria Report, released today (Monday), reveals that the pandemic has disrupted malaria services, leading to a marked increase in cases and deaths.
According to the report, there were some 241 million malaria cases and 627 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2020 - 14 million more cases in 2020 compared with 2019, and 69 000 more deaths.
Two-thirds of additional deaths (47 000) were linked to disruptions in the provision of malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment during the pandemic.
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) carries the heaviest malaria burden, accounting for 95% of all malaria cases and 96% of all deaths in 2020. Children under five years tragically accounted for 80% of deaths in SSA.
Was it not “for the hard work of public health agencies in malaria-affected countries,” maintains Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, the worst projections of Covid's impact have been avoided. We need to harness that same commitment and energy to reverse setbacks caused by the pandemic and step up the pace of progress against this disease.”
Reaching the goals of WHO’s Malaria Strategy 2030, including a 90% reduction in global malaria incidence and mortality rates by 2030, will require new approaches and tools, and better implementation of existing ones.
The wider use of RTS,S/AS01, the world’s first anti-malaria vaccine is a critical strategy for accelerating progress.
On December 1, we also marked World Aids Day 2021. The message of Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAids, was the same: “Only by moving fast to end the inequalities that drive the Aids pandemic can we overcome it.”
The world is off track from delivering on the shared commitment to end Aids by 2030. In 2020, there were 37.7 million people living with HIV, 1.5 million new HIV infections and 680 000 Aids-related deaths. Around 65% of HIV infections globally were among key populations.
The pandemic made things worse, with the disruption of essential health services, and the increased vulnerability of people with HIV to Covid-19.
HIV has claimed 36 million lives since 1981. If the world does not tackle discrimination and inequalities, UNAids and WHO warn that the next decade could see 7.7 million Aids-related deaths.
The tragedy, says Byanyima, “is that like Covid-19 we know how to beat Aids. We know how to beat pandemics. The policies to address the inequalities standing in the way of progress can be implemented, but they require leaders to step up and be bold.”
* Parker is an economist and writer based in London
Cape Times