President Gotabaya Rajapaksa touched on a wide gamut of issues during his landmark address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday. But in keeping with the underlying theme of this year’s General Assembly deliberations, President Rajapaksa focused, as did many other world leaders, on the Covid-19 contagion and its devastating effects on the world. The President, of course, noted that developing countries have been the most affected group of nations.
This time last year, Covid was on the warpath around the world and even the UNGA had to be held virtually. It is only during this year that more than 100 world leaders have been able to gather in New York for the UNGA and several other mini summits on Food, Energy, etc., on its sidelines. This does not mean that Covid is on the way out. Worldwide, Covid cases have reached 230 million while deaths have reached 4.7 million.
The one major difference between last year and this year is the availability of several highly effective Covid vaccines, which were brought to the market in record time. The vaccines have prevented a lot of deaths and hospitalisations around the world. The President mentioned to the gathering of world leaders that Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of vaccinations among developing countries, with over 50 percent of the population fully jabbed within just nine months. The vaccination programme for schoolchildren will commence today in the Western Province. Worldwide, more than six billion doses of anti-Covid vaccines have been given. Nearly 40 percent (2.18 billion) of the six billion shots have been administered in China. India (826.5 million) and the United States (386.8 million) complete the trio of countries that have given the most jabs. Indeed, only a few countries are ahead of Sri Lanka in terms of vaccination.
Even as the world battles with Covid primarily through vaccination (viral diseases generally have no cure per se), scientists are learning more about the novel Coronavirus and the associated disease that emerged only at the very end of 2019 (Hence Covid-19). In fact, it was the rapid online publication of the Coronavirus genome by Chinese scientists that enabled the drug companies and researchers to ramp up vaccine research. Learning about Covid can be divided into several phases – its possible origins (the virus is believed to have jumped from an animal to man), the phenomenon of Long Covid (where “cured” patients suffer further symptoms for up to one year), any possible treatments (from monoclonal antibodies to other repurposed drugs) and its possible transformation into an endemic disease such as the Flu or the Common Cold, which are also mostly caused by other Coronaviruses. This is also called “Living with Covid” in some countries such as the UK, Denmark and Singapore where strict lockdowns have given way to relaxing most regulations and just living one’s life normally to the greatest possible extent.
It is in this context that President Rajapaksa’s proposal disclosed at the UNGA to make Colombo a hub for knowledge sharing and research on Covid-19 should be lauded. Sri Lanka already has several world class facilities such as the Medical Research Institute (MRI) which can perhaps form the base of this new hub. Sri Lanka already has a world class free healthcare system with health and social indices that are mostly on par with those of the developed world. Apart from the stellar Covid vaccination drive, Sri Lanka has also gained a reputation for having one of the world’s best immunisation programmes for childhood and even certain adult diseases.
Many of our medical associations including the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC), Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) and the Association of Medical Specialists (AMS) have highly professional doctors and researchers whose services could be obtained for this Knowledge Hub. Many of our universities, especially the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and private hospitals have advanced laboratories which can be co-opted for this exercise. Given that the proposed Knowledge Hub would essentially be a regional structure with a focus on SAARC but with a worldwide outreach, it will not be difficult to attract top medical researchers from SAARC and other Asian countries to work there. They could be given long-term visas to facilitate their research activities at the Knowledge Hub.
It could also form partnerships with similar organisations around the world, since battling the virus should be a worldwide effort. No country, however rich and powerful, can tackle this pandemic alone. As the saying goes, “no one is safe until everyone is safe”. Therefore, developed countries have a responsibility to share their research – and their vaccines – with the rest of the world. The UK and European Union have rejected the idea proposed by the US, India and South Africa to waive vaccine patents so that pharma factories in the developing world can access the formula and manufacture vaccines such as Moderna and Pfizer under licence. This is a fatalistic attitude as unvaccinated people give a real opportunity to the virus to replicate and mutate at will. International cooperation is the only way of preventing this danger.
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