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Some of South Africa’s top medical and academic leaders have called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire government officials over delays in procuring Covid-19 vaccines, saying his actions will cause thousands of deaths and incalculable economic damage.
The demand was made in an opinion piece run by News24, the nation’s largest Internet news site, and signed by nine people, including Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council, and officials from other health organizations. , hospitals and universities.
While at least 29 countries, from Mexico to Germany, have begun inoculating their populations against the virus, South Africa has yet to conclude any direct supply agreements with pharmaceutical companies.
The country ordered vaccines from the Covax facility, an initiative designed to ensure equitable access to vaccines, but those will only cover 10% of the population of about 60 million and will arrive in the second quarter of the year.
Even then, a charity deposited the deposit after the government missed a deadline it announced.
The failure to procure vaccines is an “unforgivable failure, to be measured in thousands of lives lost, illnesses in the tens of thousands, a broken healthcare system, and deep and continuing economic damage,” health and academic leaders said at the opinion piece.
Ramaphosa will have to “swing the ax against the members and officials of his administration who are responsible for this dangerous fiasco and immediately begin to correct the course.”
Tyrone Seale, acting spokesman for Ramaphosa, said he might comment after the presidency has considered the article. The Health Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
South Africa, with more than 1.09 million confirmed Covid-19 infections and 29,175 deaths, is the most affected country on the African continent. Its economy probably contracted the most in nine decades last year, according to government estimates.
The criticism is in addition to attacks on the vaccine strategy by opposition parties, as well as the country’s main unions, which are allied with the ruling party.
With the world’s largest HIV epidemic and hundreds of thousands of TB patients, South Africa has a sophisticated healthcare system with world-leading scientists.
At least three trials of the Covid-19 vaccine are ongoing in the country and Johnson & Johnson agreed that 300 million of its Covid-19 vaccines will be manufactured at an Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd factory in the country when the injection is approved.
“Public recognition by officials that it did not seem wise to start bilateral negotiations with vaccine providers because they could not ‘risk’ ordering vaccines if they did not work is shockingly false,” said health leaders. .
They also criticized the so-called ministerial advisory committee, a group of scientists appointed by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, for echoing the government’s arguments.
Gray and Francois Venter, an academic who signed the opinion piece, were removed from the committee last year by Mkhize. Both have previously criticized the government’s approach to the virus.
Read: South Africa risks lagging behind on vaccines
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