Hira Bahadur Thapa

For any country’s economic growth physical security alone does not suffice. Health security is equally essential to create conditions for achieving economic progress. The country needs to make significant investments in the health sector to protect people’s health. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exhibited the harsh reality that those nations are faring better in their fight against the disease, which have strong health infrastructure in place. All nations of the world are battling with coronavirus for more than a year. The pandemic has left an adverse impact on the global economy. Economic growth rate has shrunk because of COVID-19. Businesses have got disrupted. Economic activities have been curtailed as nations are forced to resort to lockdowns to stem the spread of the virus.

Mass vaccination
Global economic prospects for this year are mixed because some wealthy nations have started lifting COVID-19 restrictions having attained higher percentage of vaccination of their adult population. The US and Britain are notably the two nations embracing early relaxation of shutdowns in order to accelerate the process of economic recovery. Mass vaccination is the most reliable measure to break the chains of transmissions. Data revealed from the US authorities display the quick benefits of early vaccination. The decreasing number of active caseloads in different US cities is attributed to the rapid inoculation programme. Vaccination campaign is also covering the adolescents above 12.
Vaccinated population has direct and indirect benefits. The first is that vaccinated people do not get infected or even if they do in very rare cases, their chances of hospitalisation and deaths are very rare. With almost fifty per cent of their adults inoculated already, the US is bracing for normalcy. But the global disproportionate roll out of vaccines is set to abate income inequality. Low-income countries are being ravaged, let alone achieve post-pandemic economic recovery, as they lack vaccines.
That is why economists have warned that the low rate of vaccination in the developing world is a threat to stability and long-term growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that many wealthy nations, where vaccination rates are high, are poised for a major economic expansion. In this case the US is supposed to gain 6 per cent or above economic growth. But the worry is that being deprived of timely vaccination other nations’ struggles could reverse decades of progress in fighting poverty. Therefore, a global campaign to vaccinate is the moral responsibility of wealthy nations which have the resources so that economic prosperity becomes sustainable. No doubt the vaccine nationalism of rich countries has ironically exacerbated the desperation of infected countries to get vaccines.
The G-7 countries, the world’s richest and highly industrialised nations, which are meeting for their annual summit later this month in Britain, should not hesitate to assume their leadership role in assisting poor nations getting vaccinated early. In this context the Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo has categorically said that “we are so focused on our own problems that we can’t see beyond”. She observes that rich countries shying away from their responsibilities in helping poor nations to fight coronavirus is akin to their moral failure.
The greater danger associated with slow vaccination drive is the possibilities of new variants emerging from poor countries. Mutated versions of virus will not spare anyone. The vaccinated people too face risk of contraction. Hence, collaborating with nations in the global fight through vaccine campaign is another way of protecting the health of rich countries where vaccine doses have been administered to a significant number of populations.
How investment in vaccination would benefit the entire humanity is best illustrated by the numbers offered by the IMF. It has calculated that an urgent $50 billion investment now primarily by wealthy nations to help poor countries vaccinate their population would result in $9 trillion in additional economic growth by 2025 by controlling the pandemic earlier and speeding economic recovery. No wonder then that IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva says this investment in global vaccination would probably be “the highest return on public investment in modern history”. With this investment of $50 billion, the aim is to vaccinate at least 40 per cent of the global population by the end of 2021 and at least 60 per cent by the first half of next year.

Scandalous inequality
According to IMF an additional amount of $ one trillion in tax revenue would be generated by creating conditions of better economic performance by rich nations which would be made possible by bringing the pandemic under control. Experts believe that this vaccine initiative launched globally would pay for itself many times over simply in extra tax revenue. If virus is not curbed in poor countries, its immediate impact like compelling young girls to pull out of the school, and vitamin A supplementation causing micronutrient deficiencies leading to blindness and death, among others, would be colossal. This scenario will magnify income inequality.
Against such background comes the statement from the chief of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who says, “The ongoing vaccine crisis is a scandalous inequality that is perpetuating the pandemic. More than 75 per cent of all vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries”.
Amidst this precarious situation Nepal’s new budget for coming fiscal year could hardly have ignored the reality on the ground. Prioritising the health sector to which more than two trillion rupees have been allocated is in tune with today’s urgency. Prime Minister Oli has rightly emphasised that all adult Nepali citizens would be vaccinated free of cost and in this vein his government’s appeal to bilateral and international donors seem to have received positive response. After all, no nation can have sustainable economic growth without due focus on physical security and health security simultaneously.

(Thapa was foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008-09. thapahira17@gmail.com)