Nearly two weeks after India initiated world’s biggest mass vaccination drive of the world, the country has gathered praise from the United Nations for its vaccine production capacity and its willingness to help out other countries of the world by supplying vaccines to them during this time of need.
Praising India’s efforts at creating and distributing vaccines, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said that India’s vaccine production facilities and capacity are the world’s best assets in the fight against COVID 19.
The UN Secretary General has expressed strong hopes that India will be playing a greater role in the global fight against the COVID 19 disease as it is not only capable of vaccinating its own citizens but also is ready to help other needy nations in starting their own vaccination campaigns. This cooperative outlook of the South Asian nation that looks at the world as a community combatting a common problem has made it a global stakeholder in the post COVID 19 scenario where every country is trying to roll out COVID 19 vaccines. The fact that India is self-sufficient in vaccine research and production has made it a leader among the South Asian community and has brought recognition for it on the global level.
Elaborating on the role that India can play for the international community in preventing COVID 19, the UN Secretary General has said that the UN is counting on India to lead the global effort towards building immunity against the COVID 19 virus as it has one of the most advanced pharmaceutical industries in the world that has been working towards not only finding effective treatments for the disease but also vaccines against the virus.
The UN Secretary General has said that the country has pioneered the production of important generics that has in turn helped in the democratisation of the availability of medicines that has made important medicines accessible around the world. Replicating its success in providing generic medicines to needy people around the world, the UN is expecting India to play a pivotal role in making COVID 19 vaccines accessible to everyone around the world.
This statement of the UN Chief comes in in close succession of the WHO chief saying that the COVID 19 vaccine divide between the rich and poor countries is increasing day by day as rich countries are rolling out vaccines but poor countries still lack the infrastructure and health system in place to go ahead with the launch of national vaccination programmes. This means that vaccine distribution is not happening uniformly across cross sections of the global population and this could lead to a section of the global population suffering without access to proper health care. India, by helping other countries to access effective COVID 19 vaccines is ultimately going to contribute in bridging the gap of health infrastructure between rich developed nations and poor struggling nations and help the world heal from COVID 19 as a whole. The UN Secretary General’s faith in the vaccine production capacity of India has been a significant recognition of its contribution in the field of scientific research and medicine.
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