Winding Diplomacy Experience in Search of Vaccines
As soon as these two issues were resolved, there was a need for therapeutic drugs, which could help reduce the impact on infected patients.
By
MAHDI MUHAMMAD, DEONISIA ARLINTA
·5 minutes read
A boy receives a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 at Discovery vaccination site in Sandton, Johannesburg, on December 15, 2021. – Two shots of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine offers around 70 percent protection against severe disease from Omicron, according to results of a study published December 14, 2021 in South Africa.The emergence of the highly mutated variant, first detected in South Africa last month, sparked fears that it could cause severe disease, be more contagious or could evade vaccines.
The year 2020 had just begun when there appeared news about a new, unknown disease hitting Wuhan city, Hubei province, China. Hundreds of people were exposed to the disease. Some had even died. Time seemed to go faster than usual. In mid-March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the mysterious disease, later known as Covid-19, as a pandemic.
Penny Dewi Herasati, a diplomat who currently serves as the director of sociocultural and international organizations of developing countries at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, fully remembered the panicked situation at that time. Everyone was in panic. The official price of a box of 50 masks, which was usually less than Rp 40,000, suddenly skyrocketed.
Not only did the price skyrocket, but masks suddenly disappeared from the market. "Everyone seemed to see a fire. They wanted to extinguish it, but they didn't have adequate tools," Penny recalled, Friday (14/1/2022).
In such a situation, said Penny, Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi asked all Indonesian diplomatic missions to knock on the door of friendly countries, partner countries, to help Indonesia overcome the crisis of masks and personal protective equipment. South Korea and Japan, according to Penny, were the first two countries to send masks and personal protective equipment to Indonesia.
Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi
As soon as these two issues were resolved, there was a need for therapeutic drugs, which could help reduce the impact on infected patients. Foreign Affairs Minister Retno sent a message containing an order to the Indonesian diplomatic missions to seek information on which countries they could knock on the door of, so that Indonesia could get vaccines, either through grants or buying.
At the beginning of the search process, according to Penny, developed countries closed their doors. The United States was hard to approach. So were European countries. "The easiest was China. That was why Foreign Affairs Minister Retno first went abroad, to China, to Sinovac. China wanted to open up to us," said Penny.
Commitment to share
It has been roughly two years since the Covid-19 pandemic has passed. Currently, Indonesia is included in the five countries with the highest number of doses in the implementation of Covid-19 vaccination. Director of prevention and control of directly infectious diseases at the Health Ministry, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, disclosed that 176.3 million people had received the first dose of vaccine, 119.7 million people had received the second dose, and 1.4 million people had received booster doses.
Indonesia has received at least 439 million doses of vaccine, which is expected to be sufficient to provide primary and follow-up doses of vaccination to the public. Of that number, 333 million vaccines have been obtained through bilateral cooperation, 85.4 million have been obtained through the COVAX facility, and 21.3 million doses through grants. A part of the vaccine supply comes from Western countries.
The experience of winding diplomacy to get the vaccine has strengthened the commitment to share vaccines.
Even though vaccination coverage is high, Indonesia is concerned about the fate of other countries, especially poor and developing countries, which have difficulty accessing vaccines. Since the beginning, Indonesia has declared equal access to vaccines. The experience of winding diplomacy to get the vaccine has strengthened the commitment to share vaccines.
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Director of prevention and control of directly infectious diseases at the Health Ministry, Siti Nadia Tarmizi.
WHO data until last week showed that 9.1 billion Covid-19 vaccines had been administered worldwide. A total of 3.89 billion people on earth received two doses of the vaccine, in line with WHO recommendations. However, of that number, according to the United Nations Children's Agency (UNICEF), the number of vaccines received by rich countries is 15 times bigger than that received by Sub-Saharan African countries. There is a very glaring disparity.
"The G7 member countries at the beginning of vaccine production bought 2.4 billion doses of vaccine. Each of their citizens could get five doses,” said Agung Prakoso, the program officer for health issues at Indonesia for Global Justice. Africa and parts of Eastern Europe and Asia are lagging behind in vaccination. Vaccination in Africa up to the present is estimated to only cover 7 percent of its total population of 1.5 billion people. "Vaccine inequality is not only holding back the poorest countries, but also holding the world (from the recovery process)," said UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore.
Addressing the problem of inequality in access to vaccines is one of Indonesia's goals as chair of the G20 this year. There are many problems, one of which is the issue of raw materials and intellectual property rights for vaccine production. "This must be overcome, especially if we want wider access to vaccines," said Agung.
