Dear Friends,<\/p>\n
As of yesterday we are back in lockdown, most of us here in Italy once again living in a so-called \u201cred zone\u201d. The numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19, intensive care unit admissions and deaths from the virus continue to rise. Schools have closed and families have been brought to their knees. There is much pain and fear, and pandemic fatigue is setting in. Worse, we no longer even have the energy to envision a better future.<\/p>\n
But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and its name is vaccines<\/strong>. Availability is limited: we don\u2019t have enough doses in Italy, and the situation is far worse in Africa. We need more<\/strong>, enough for everyone. This is why COVID-19 vaccine patents must be suspended<\/strong>, so that production can be ramped up. This must be done urgently if we want to prevent the development of new variants that could jeopardize all the progress made up until now. Yet unbelievably, not even during the World Trade Organization meeting last week was an agreement reached on waiving intellectual property rights for the vaccines. India and South Africa continue to press their case while the United States, United Kingdom and European Union Commission argue against it, despite numerous appeals \u2013 including one by the World Health Organization signed by CUAMM and many others \u2013 asking that these rights be suspended even just temporarily.<\/p>\n Despite all of this, vaccines have begun trickling into Africa<\/strong> thanks to the COVAX initiative and donations from China. While still too few given the size of the continent\u2019s population, they are <\/em>beginning to arrive \u2013 to Sierra Leone (100,000), Mozambique (200,000), Angola (600,000), South Sudan (700,000), Uganda (900,000) and Ethiopia (2,200,000).<\/p>\n CUAMM is now making available our on-the-ground <\/strong>human and logistical resources<\/strong> (personnel, pickups, motorbikes, refrigerators and so on) to local vaccination systems,<\/strong> but these systems are very fragile, and the needs are infinite. We need to do more, devoting every last bit of energy to strengthening logistics, personnel and communities, and providing tools and training; and all of this has to be done right away. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve launched our A Vaccine for Us All<\/em> initiative, because when greater quantities of the vaccines finally arrive to Africa, distribution mechanisms are going to have to be ready to go and effective. We\u2019ve already seen the challenges faced in Italy; just imagine the situation in the vulnerable countries where CUAMM maintains a presence. They need our hard work and support, and we<\/em> need everyone\u2019s help in order to provide it. The challenge is daunting, and will require both hearts and minds, but we won\u2019t back down. We need to transform vaccines into actual \u201cshots in the arm\u201d<\/strong>, starting with our local doctors and nurses, who are at especially high risk of infection, and then moving on to everyone else. From Mozambique, where the number of cases is soaring because of the country\u2019s proximity to South Africa, our own Giovanni Putoto puts it in a nutshell, reminding us how \u201cAlongside the appeals, there is so<\/em> much concrete work that needs to get done\u201d. As always, CUAMM is on the ground ready to do its part, side by side with<\/em> our local partners.<\/p>\n Thank you for joining us in the enormous challenge called A Vaccine for Us All<\/em><\/strong>. Only by working together will we be able to save ourselves from this pandemic.<\/p>\n Father Dante<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19, intensive care unit admissions and deaths from the virus continue to rise. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and its name is vaccines. Availability is limited: we don\u2019t have enough doses in Italy, and the situation is far worse in Africa.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":50710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1172,2493],"tags":[2621,914,992],"argomenti":[2622,2522,2537],"protagonisti":[],"luoghi":[2536,2620],"class_list":["post-50709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-homenews","tag-vaccine","tag-africa","tag-covid-19","argomenti-vaccine","argomenti-covid-19","argomenti-africa","luoghi-africa","luoghi-italia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50709"},{"taxonomy":"argomenti","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/argomenti?post=50709"},{"taxonomy":"protagonisti","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonisti?post=50709"},{"taxonomy":"luoghi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorswithafrica.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/luoghi?post=50709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}