Thread by @kakape

I’m really struggling with this idea of a race to vaccinate everyone HERE now. Yes, we all want vaccine asap. But while we are discussing how soon we can immunize everyone in Germany or the US, health workers are dying in countries with zero doses so far.

sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/u…

In Zimbabwe, one of the top doctors and HIV/AIDS researchers, James Hakim, died in late January.
As his colleague and former student Leolin Katsidzira told me: "people like James are people who keep the system going”.
Here is one of many tributes: kcl.ac.uk/news/tribute-t…

Hakim’s death came within hours of the death of David Katzenstein, another important HIV/AIDS researcher and voice for global health, in the same hospital in Harare.
Here is a good piece on him and his work:
med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/…

I talked to Emilia Noormahomed in Mozambique who told me about recent deaths there: An anesthesiologist, a gastroenterologist, a urologist. And two young general care physicians, who were not even 30 yet. It was heartbreaking.

These are just examples of what the continent is losing, what the world is losing.
More than 180 million doses have been given. The US is administering more than a million doses A DAY.
And look at sub-Saharan Africa on this map
(bloomberg.com/graphics/covid…)

And while every death is a tragedy, losing a health care worker in a place like Zimbabwe or Mozambique, where health care is stretched sooo thin, has much bigger effects than in the US or Germany. As @ashishkjha told me: “It will literally take an entire generation to rebuild”.

@ashishkjha As @DrTedros said recently: "The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure”.
And it’s not just about vaccines, it’s about therapeutics like tocilizumab, it's about ventilators, oxygen, masks.

@ashishkjha @DrTedros Has the US done enough?
Robert Schooley told me: “We have worked with our counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa for 20 years to try to help them build a more resilient health care infrastructure and we’re sitting on our hands watching that be torn apart by the coronavirus.”

@ashishkjha @DrTedros But this isn't really about what the US has done or Germany, or even about Africa. It’s about the simple fact that we are dealing with a pandemic, a global catastrophe, and the smartest, fastest, and yes, most decent way out of it is to always think globally while acting locally.