Javier Socastro
Former President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Portugal, José Manuel Durão Barroso, currently President of the Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI), an international organisation for global vaccination against COVID, spoke last Thursday at a Zoom meeting organised by the Euroamerica Foundation.
At this meeting, José Manuel Durão Barroso updated the audience with the latest information on COVID figures and stressed the importance of vaccinating the majority of the world’s population.
First, Durão Barroso gave his view on the global performance in terms of COVID figures, deaths and vaccination speed. “The world was not prepared”, “globally speaking, the situation is far from being under control”, he said.
Then he also wanted to celebrate the speed and unity which the world has witnessed in terms of collective action. To him, there were several good news. For example, how fast humans managed to develop the first reliable vaccine. Also, European action and its fairly effective political and economic response to the health crisis, in a world where almost every GDP is suffering so much.
However, he was clear when stating than not all countries were behaving fairly. “It is a matter of social justice” that there are actual efforts for global vaccination. Countries should aim to reach lower percentages of vaccinated national population to start delivering vaccines beyond their borders.
In particular, Jose Manuel Durão Barroso wanted to point out how inefficient would be the opposite position because even if a country’s most population is vaccinated, the virus could mutate and produce the same problem again in the short run.
Nevertheless, the President of GAVI, was feeling quite optimistic. He believes that, thanks to organisations such as GAVI, UNICEF, the WHO and others, total vaccination can be possible in what he called “the biggest logistic program of health delivery”.
