Mohan Singh
Businessman Jiwan Hangkim of Dopla district in Nepal has decided to permanently settle in Kathmandu for the education of his two children.Siddhiraj Baral a native of Jhapa district, returned home to take care of his farmland, spending years doing schooling and college in Kathmandu.The two educated Nepali youths in their early fifties have nothing in common except that they know all the narrow lanes of Kathmandu at their fingertips.Despite different approaches to life, they are firm believers in the maxim of “credibility” and “hoodwink” has no place in their life.
Their reference may definitely sound out of place at this preposterous juncture when half the world is still struggling against second wave of Corona epidemic.Nevertheless we cannot do justice with the ensuing dialectics without deliberating on “ways and means” to tackle the deadly mutating virus which is shattering economies and pulverizing overstretched public health systems.
Here they fit the bill. When we talk about Corona, all eyes turn towards China, progenitor of cataclysmic COVID virus, right in the womb of its buzzing heartland .
With incessant bad press and criticism that reverberated all throughout 2020, China is now trying to redeem its image, reaching out to as many countries as possible with Covid 19 vaccine assistance .There is absolutely no denial of the fact that China was the first nation to commercially launch Covid-19 vaccine, almost over an year back in the middle of 2020. However, controversy shrouds over the way Communist country had been pushing and road rolling vaccines to vulnerable partner countries. This is reminiscent of yesteryears paradigm of shoving toxic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects , particularly to gullible eastern and central European countries in addition to smaller littoral states in its backyard viz. Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, ostensibly all in all for strategic gains.
The fundamental question albeit is the one relating to efficacy, potency and safety of Chinese vaccines along with ensuring transparent peer group or institutional scrutiny of clinical trial data. Vaccine development, that too of a novel virus, is a painstakingly excruciating process, demanding investment of substantial time,money and resources, involving stages of testing cutting across age,sex, patient profiles juxtaposed with spatial,ethinic and temporal diversity. The cornerstone of any vaccine development ecosystem is unequivocally transparency, wide dissemination/ scrutiny of trial data by scientific community besides undertaking intrusive tracking of potential/latent side effects. However in case of Chinese vaccines, aforementioned key markers are missing and importantly, authorities there are steadfastly denying sharing clinical trial reports with recipient countries , fortifying vaccine development stages under veils of secrecy. All these clandestine machinations that too for a public healthcare product stokes fears and reservations beyond reasonable doubt, consequently widening trust deficit as population in general remains sceptical and conservative with respect to inoculation by any new vaccine.
Significantly, past track record of efficiency and effectiveness of Chinese health care products catering to the needs of Corona Virus pandemic has also not been encouraging. Immediately after virus struck the world, Chinese testing kits were in the news for all the wrong reasons. Spain sent back millions of them as they turned out to be faulty. Similarly, in Czech Republic, staggering 80 percent of the testing kits sent by China turned out to be faulty!
As saying goes ‘once bitten twice shy,’ although Chinese vaccines have been accepted by some countries under duress, most of the liberal Western democracies are still reticent about their usage. So far, China has failed to clear doubts about their efficacy,potency and side effects amidst prevalent reports of short circuiting / skipping crucial stages of clinical trial process and fast tracking regulatory approval, circumventing due process of law. Interestingly Chinese media had been gloating,boasting and reveling under self projected sucess stories of Chinese vaccines while simultaneously undermining effectiveness of vaccines made by world’s best-known pharmaceutical companies. This has all the trappings and footprints of state sponsored propaganda, more so as global media had been consistently flagging how ‘efficacy of Chinese vaccines is among the lowest in the world’.
To begin with, Sri Lanka was amongst the first countries in Asia that understood the politics behind Chinese vaccines and consequently opted for the much safer and reliable Indian vaccines.The leaked conservation between Nepalese and Chinese foreign ministers in which the latter was reportedly found to be pressuring the tiny Himalayan country to accept Chinese vaccines broadly underlines what our northern neighbor may be up to.
Significantly, India, which is Nepal’s closest neighbour, became the first country to prioritise sending Covid-19 vaccine, even at the cost of its own citizens, purely as a goodwill gesture. Arrival of Indian vaccines in Kathmandu helped Nepalese to heave a sigh of relief. Though India remains committed to supplying additional trenches of vaccines, sudden surge in the Covid-19 active case load in India during debilitating second wave has left the supply timelines haywire. Accordingly China, eyeing tactical space in Indian Subcontinent made a back door entry to fill the expedient healthcare vacuum,pushing its own vaccines towards tiny Himalayan nation.
Even otherwise if we gloss over aforementioned glaring discrepancies, still from the standpoint of fiscal prudence, Chinese vaccines are far more expensive than the Indian ones, including issues of high end logistic costs and inherent supply chain constraints. Moreover, masquerading as a good Samaritan, many believe China is actually attempting to put poor countries in its debt trap by offering liberal financial assistance to fund vaccine procurement. Generally known as vaccine diplomacy, China’s latest move to reach out to as many countries as possible with Chinese vaccines, may according to experts could be a face saving tactic.It is widely assessed that China is sheepishly trying to capitalize on Covid 19 crisis, even as the world’s leading democracies including United States of America, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea, France, Australia and Canada have mostly negative reviews about China made vaccines. Interestingly, according to a survey conducted by University of Hong Kong, about 61 percent of people do not want to take vaccines made by China!
This brings us to the question Why?
With what we have deliberated and delineated so far, time has come to explain why people like Jiwan Hangkim and Siddhiraj Baral figured here at first place.
Hangkhim was among the first to get the shot of made in India Covid-19 vaccine. Now he is waiting for the second dose, which is not available. Though his restlessness was growing as the date to administer second dose approached, expert committee’s finding that the second dose of Covishield should be administered only after 12 weeks has come as a big relief.
Baral, though initially ambivalent about the vaccine, is now desperate to do so.But ironically Indian vaccine is simply not available. “The Chinese vaccine has arrived, but I will patiently wait for the Indian one and will not rush to the vaccination queue immediately.”
Both Hangkim and Baral were candid in their conversation. Both of them categorically averred “after so much writing on the wall about Chinese vaccines, how could we simply opt for the same?” They were also in unison to state that India should “immediately pitch in by supplying both the first and second doses of Covid-19 vaccines as a major chunk of Nepalese population are eagerly waiting for the same.”
Why India?
“Nepal prefers Indian vaccines for multiple reasons of pricing, logistics, across the counter availability, credibility, safety and assurance. “India has vowed to supply vaccines to the immediate neighbourhood,” a foreign news channel meanwhile reported this in the background.
