tv The Stream Al Jazeera May 12, 2021 11:30am-12:01pm +03
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pay and benefits b.g. was one of a handful of nurses who joined the made the leap or rights demonstration it's not the 1st time nurses have taken to the streets to air their grievances was health and health workers oh happy feet half bad to be early have thought that any of them are life because you know that even bob and bob are meant to be heard loud about the role in defining their meat they call the b.b. from passion when there was. the difficulty of claiming called 1000 benefits has weighed on d.j.'s mind you could find work in another country that would mean leaving his family behind barnaby lo al-jazeera miller. this is al jazeera these are your top stories gaza has been under
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a near constant barrage of ass strikes as israel launched its most intense bombardment in years police headquarters and govern buildings have been destroyed and at least $44.00 palestinians killed palestinian rockets meanwhile have rained down on israeli towns and cities killing at least 5 more than a 1000 rockets were fired overnight targeting areas as far away as tel of even the north down to be in the south. al-jazeera as gaza produces some part of hollywood has been reporting on how israel is also targeting weaponry asong creeps. so they're great is the new developments the forces that have intercepted. a drawn that. was used by the town of kenan armed group to put it out attack inside the israeli territory is this is the new development. by the product
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the armed groups that they have not announced about that with blood supposed to be like. a sort of prize maybe but. the grade is moved a little of a collision on the policy and group says that that's where he goes with them all go another level of us coalition you know as nation has worn the sides that that on track for a full scale war is called for an immediate cease fire saying normal people a painful latest fight is to deescalate. supporters of both the israelis and the palestinians have gathered in new york's arrival protests hundreds of people groups outside the israeli consulate in manhattan and thousands of people have brought in london to protest against the israeli attacks on gaza the fortis gathered outside the british prime minister's official residence at 10 downing street as he headlines the stream coming up next. it's a very bleak picture for
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a lot of americans out there white supremacy impacts all of our patients your plan even the money into the hands of some workers taking money out of the hands of other workers everyone goes to their camp and becomes a us versus them this is the deal about constraining a nuclear program the bottom line is that the questions on the air. hey welcome to the show today welcome to the stream i'm josh rushing i'm sitting in for me ok and today we're talking about global vaccine inequality i want to show you a chart of my laptop to give you a real sense of the story here so do it pretty quickly you can look at north america this is for people who are the share of people who have received at least one dose a covert vaccine by may 10th so in north america you look about a 3rd of the population in europe a quarter of the population south america 13 percent and here's where our story's going to rest today and asia 4.6 percent and africa 1 point one percent now before
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we jump into it i want to show you another thing we're going to go to youtube check this out we're live on you tube at this moment and see that chad over there on there on the right we have a live producer waiting to get your comments to me so i can share in the show when in fact we'll start with one here's one from souter shun tarabay let me say it loud millions of people will die if you don't waive the patents so basically making the argument that the patents of the bottleneck stopping people from getting the vaccine will see if that's the case or not today if you look at the world right now what's happening with coal with 19 is raging in india where there's 22000000 cases there approaching a quarter 1000000 dead southern india has gone on full lockdown but the rest of the country is yet to go on full lockdown we're going to discuss what's happening the vaccines in india and where cope it hasn't really hit hard yet and that's in sub-saharan africa and they're screaming for the back scenes there but they cannot get to the had a line and that's going to come up into this question as well and back let me go
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ahead and bring in our guests who are joining us all the way from london to bangalore will begin with you what can you introduce yourself. my name's dr. kay chair of the africa vaccine delivery african union that seems in the felines thank you very much for having me you already thank you for joining us for us from london to your choice from duke university can you tell us a bit about yourself. and krishna by kumar and my doctor and i serve as the director of the new global health innovation center where we're trying to study and to advocate per stronger global access and equity pro-vaccine global stronger asks us in equity for vaccines we should put up front your center does receive funding from pharmaceutical companies in the us is that right it does we work with the public in the private sector including firms in the pharmaceutical sector the gates foundation the u.s. government they receive funding from pfizer johnson and johnson. we receive funding
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as presented and from there on the by their foundation but we don't do any work that's related to their vaccine development or well ok great thank you question and can tell us a bit about yourself. so the problem i live in bangkok but i could get into a project which works for access to medicines in india brazil and south africa and i've been doing this actually for 18 years and then this in start of the bad i mean i've been looking on increasing access to coronavirus excellence give us a sense of what it's like in india right now or is bangalore a big thing that are on lockdown so 500 meters from my house we actually have a good intent of military police who are standing guard at an intersection in traffic usually buses which now it doesn't because there isn't any traffic going on full of locked out we've actually been on lockdown for the last 2 weeks and we will be indefinitely and that's because actually bangalore has the highest slowed in the
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country it is actually 200. and what your access to vaccines like there. well personally i could give you an example from last week i had to find a 2nd to do for my parents who had to give the 1st those of the astra zeneca vaccine about it weeks ago. i spent 8 hours on the road on the phone with dreams of different hospitals public health centers to find a center that would allow my 87 year old father and my 72 year old mother to get their 2nd dose in a situation where they wouldn't have to wait for more than 2 or 3 hours in the event we found one at 4 pm in the evening after trying all morning and they waited 2 hours in the home at about 7 o'clock. with this 2nd doze last week i'm going to bring in our what audience here we have a. tweet from motion or who says that this is this is a response to the stream tweeted out are you worried about covert vaccine
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inequality in your country and motion says this is specifically true for india which is hardest hit for a vaccination needs to be enrolled in an app which most indians don't have access to it's a model which is most discriminatory and biased against the less privileged and role in the end said to do with your family role than the app. you know this is a hilarious story but i have a love hate relationship with the indian government which over the last 7 years has been actually purely hate and that it has recently extended to the apt that they created when my parents 1st daughters i spent a grand total of about 48 hours maybe constantly on this app to get them a vaccine of white men at an appointed time when i was assured that there wouldn't be huge crowds and of course my parents foolishly went on that appointed appointed day to the hospital to be taught like you man because you know of course we give out all of x. endorsers at 9 am in the morning to the 1st people who came here to get vaccines
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this app doesn't work and some of the next day my parents went back at 9 am in the morning without any app whatsoever to get that vaccine and got it like everybody else is doing regardless of the you know somewhat astonishing technological advances our government is putting out so it's an incredible mess in fact there are actually software actors who are not working on the new version of the app to set up scripts that run in the background over 48 hours to find an appointment for them because what india has done is we've opened up x. nations to 945000000 people this is everybody about the age of 18 with its stock of vaccines that are in the region of about 100000000 right so just imagine this you've opened up vaccinations to the extent of needing about $1900000000.00 of vaccines with about $100000000.00 doses on hand q the confusion that.
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haul around vaccine equity that you are bringing out here sorry just to jump in at the map and no i mean this is way talking about in africa we're talking about the fact that it is ridiculous that parts of the world have no vaccine that you know. you have 87 year olds who are waiting 8 hours in line to try to get a vaccine and there are some parts of the world that are literally either hoarding them or are standing in line at blocking plate places in line india of course produces vaccines and this is a combination of factors but in africa it india has seen 4 point one percent vaccinated and you know you're hearing now that there's 100000000 doses and 80900000000 people waiting in line that's in equity is the problem is the issue of our time we can't we're not going to end this pandemic until you know. parents can get back some aged until you know my uncles and aunties and and other people can get vaccinated in africa we have
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a global crisis on our hand and you're listening to somebody from a vaccine producing nation i mean it is just i'm so sorry for what you're going through in india i'm so sorry my heart breaks it keeps me awake at night when i see these images of literally funeral pyres that literally signify the what a world of fire where the fire is it is it is it is inhumane that the world and world leaders wouldn't be jumping to attention to do everything they can in this moment to ensure that we have vaccines to everybody who needs them as quickly as possible and as equitable amount manner as possible president by last week supported the idea of temporarily opening up the patents would that help would that get more vaccines to more people. yeah 1st. my heart goes out to people in india and lots of different parts of the world that are really suffering at the moment and we do absolutely as has been said need to worry about equity as the guiding principle by which we think about allocating distributing and the
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minister in vaccines around the world. we need to think about this from a different time horizons in the short term what we need to do today is make sure that the doses that are coming off the production lines are distributed in a much more equitable manner it can't be that they almost all go to high income countries and we have to wait for some of them to be donated to charity model to get to low and middle income countries we have to figure out how to make that work better secondly we've got to figure out how to get rid of the barriers we have to ramp up manufacturing production as much as we possibly can over the next 3 to 6 months that means looking at every facility we have now bringing up new production lines getting rid of barriers like ron greedy and and materials and seeing if we can get more but doses manufactured and then 3rd we have to get to a more distributed model of vaccine manufacturing globally india has traditionally
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been the workhorse of manufacturing and we thought that that model isn't fit for purpose in the midst of a pandemic right now in the us manufacturing $70.00 to $80000000.00 doses of vaccine a month which isn't enough just to meet domestic needs much less the needs of the rest of the world so we've got to look at other parts of asia africa latin america especially to invest now in building up capacity even if it takes 621-2218 months to come online my worry about the ip wavers is that right now it's a distraction in the long term i think it's a positive indication that the u.s. is taking this very seriously want to play a leadership role and is willing to invest and partner with others around the world unfortunate. an ip waiver even if granted today wouldn't increase the amount of money and wouldn't increase the number of doses in the next 3 to 6 months that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it i just hope we don't get distracted by that and forget to do all the other urgent things that are still needed there you know to
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jump in there are still acting on it next yet sorry i mean i have to say absolutely disagree that vaccine waivers are destruction right now i think the distraction is trying to move us away from that scene wavers because what that scene wavers do in this moment is that it shows that we're grabbing the opportunity within this crisis with both hands we are at a disadvantage in the low and middle income countries of the world because for instance let me use africa we have we have $25.00 we use 25 percent of the world's vaccines produced globally in any given year we produce one percent of those vaccines 99 percent we import we have seen that when a crisis like this comes you said that the vaccine manufacturing is not that potus i would argue that the entire global health infrastructure that we have at the moment is shown not to be fit for purpose it isn't just delivering for you in the u.s. it isn't delivering for the u.k. it isn't delivering for india and it isn't delivering for africa if yes it is not a quick fix wages are not a quick fix in this moment right now but waivers if we if we get them in place and
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if we get the technology transfer and we get the know how put in place then what it will show is that this this virus isn't going away we've got another year another sadly another 2 years perhaps so we can prepare it's about preparedness it's about being ready for that next thing that is that is coming our way so i disagree that vaccines are just as our destruction i think they're absolutely critical and i think the signal that has been made by the u.s. is very welcome and we call for the rest of the world to do the same i don't have to chew. i want to i want to make 2 proof points here and the 1st is that about a month ago a colleague of mine in amec county who heads m.s.'s operations in india and i wrote a piece in the guardian about the way in which the indian crisis was affecting the rest of the poor world so $92.00 countries in the world about half the world's population depends upon vaccines that are produced in one company in one countries the serum astute in india now those vaccines we're treating as india's vaccines but
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they were never india's vaccines they were contracted up to 50 to 60 percent of those vaccines to go to countries like nigeria who instead of getting the doses that they were contracted to receive and promised to receive last year their seed flee enough to back a little less than one percent of their populations this is countries like ghana countries like nigeria and if they were lucky to get any vaccine doses out of from the kovacs facility which is this consortium run by the world health organization and garvey and seppi now this is a huge letdown there are countries others other countries like pakistan who didn't get any doses by the way so the indian crisis where we are essentially usurping vaccines that were not meant for us to be used for us is creating this situation where it's not satisfying the indian need and it is letting down the other countries who have even less vaccines than us and who depended on this supply in order to get through this crisis right but the 2nd quick point that i want to make is that the vaccine they didn't waver that biden has signaled his support for is
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the start of a marathon the vaccine recipe needs to be shared with the world we need to create as many opportunities for people to produce these vaccines as possible because we need them in the billions now the recipe consists of doing gradients the 1st ingredient other legal rights to make the vaccine loses its that we're proud to have it now because she was also right in saying that it's not all the way because the 2nd degree view it is the technology think of it as a manual to make the vaccine right that needs to be shared as well. so we no need to pressure both to complete the trip so we have a process as well as to get the seconding reeded coming to us which is the manual to make these vaccines so it's absolutely a step in the right direction but i cautioned it's the 1st step and we don't have time to run a marathon i want to bring in a someone from our community here derek lowe is a drug discovery researcher and he sent us this video comment i think it's crucial that we vaccinate as much of the world as possible as quickly as we can but i don't
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think that patents are really the bottleneck modernity has opened up theirs and there haven't been any takers yet that's because the real bottlenecks are expertise supplies of key ingredients a lot of technology that's very hard to replicate if you haven't done it yourself so it's already scaling up in north america and europe and india and china i think that's the place to put the effort in the biggest scale factories which are already being enlisted. so actual terrorists and it's our style that jump in here for us i don't really have to do this because it's like that i mean bursting with information to give you death so this is this is something that's been repeated and you'll hear this a lot if you open our foreign affairs you'll see an article today on this if you open up the wall street journal and you'll see an article by a board member of pfizer saying this is vaccines are complex not this is the sort of praise that is now giving me i was actually i mean it literally makes me break
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out into higher stripes and so i apologize for being so excited but i'm in the middle of and i really you know it's become so personal love that i can't be rational about this but let me just give you this example the modern era said that they would not enforce the f.b.i. agents on their vaccine during the pandemic but guess what but then it doesn't actually all not there baited so one of the bit ins in the modern or vaccine is owned by the national institutes of health and i it has been licensed it by the n.h. in the united states another bit of it was developed at the university of pennsylvania license to a biotech company who then for the license to do more dana and to find out more then i cannot give away it's been even if it's one to one to don't i'm sorry to say so the only way that this is possible is by a blanket waiver that suspends pharmaceutical monopolies in intellectual property in the pandemic in order to get that clutch of intellectual property rights around this vaccine otherwise you're going to go one by one case by case and my god if you
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tried that the legal really you would be spending the next couple of years trying to untangle that mess right it is it is absurd but the 2nd point i want to make is that derek lowe is talking about the m r in a technology which is a revolutionary platform that pfizer and what it used with great success it's had great results so far but you know the interesting thing about it is you know their their story is that because it's a new technology it's more complex and no one can make it i've been in conversation and we wrote a piece about this in the atlantic last week with my colleague chelsea clinton where we are. to get past that exist the m.r. need maxine's do not use biology grew fighters costa rican good process guess what the easier to me and because of that guess what there are potentially 250 plus companies in india who make injectable pharmaceuticals who are manufacturing units that are politically gave a bill to make an m.r.i. new vaccine and possibly succeeding not the ones that are going to but this is what
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it is so if you try to be honest ok so he or she were free for a while so chris would you go and i'm going to bring him some of our u 2 comments before christmas sure i think we should separate sort of means from and so absolutely we need to get to a place where we have sustainable capacity in every part of the world to manufacture a vaccine without a doubt the means to get there i'm saying can't be one or the other right if to pursue an ip waiver is i think a perfectly reasonable strategy but it does not solve our problems in the next 6 or 9 or 12 months what we also have to do in the meantime is to make sure that the doses that are rolling off the production line now get distributed more equitably and we have to be able to ramp up short term manufacturing in the current facilities that are able to ramp up which means solving all the supply chain challenges and we have to figure out and i personally think that a accelerated way to building that capacity is through voluntary transfer of
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technology of licenses of capacity building human capital so that it does become sustainable and figure out how we can keep it financially sustainable so that we don't just ramp it all up and have to ramp it all back down in the next 2 or 3 years so i think we all want to achieve the same ends and that ip waiver is certainly a signal of political will doesn't actually get us closer today. you know they have a couple of the you tube comments i'm going to throw your way so you can respond to them ones from anton says we shouldn't blame governments for thinking about their citizens 1st and the 2nd is from grave peril why should the pads be lifted what stops anyone from inventing their own vaccine. well those mean those interesting comments the 1st one about late not blaming governments nobody's saying that governments shouldn't think about their own citizens 1st but what we're saying is
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that it is that he and light and self interest of all global citizens and indeed all governments of the world to ensure that this virus is stopped in all countries because as is just telling us about the hell living hell that he's going through in india those variants the b 1617 variant that was 1st identified in india was identified yesterday by w.h.o. named as a variant of concern what does that mean it is more transmissible it is potentially market and to body of a said i don't want to create any panic but by saying to me too much of that at the moment but small saudis are showing that there are problems with this very and it is why there is such a raging fire right now if we don't stop it across the world it marches on so it is self-defeating to end of it in the us or in the u.k. because it will just come back again it will come back stronger it will come back with different variants i mean this is the lame man's explanation of of why governments need to think of the whole world and then why can't people just invent
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their own that is also i mean yes fine we're all about innovation and creativity but the issue here is that we're in a global pandemic you know this is a once in a 100 year event which demands a once in 100 year level of global corporations solidarity nobody was expecting this nobody was waiting for this and class people didn't just invent their own governments the government of the u.k. the government took germany the government of the us put a lot of money and other countries but a lot of money into the research and development of these vaccines so someone didn't just wake up go into their kitchen and use a recipe analogy you know throw a few things together and go woo i've got a great taxi no this is been years in the making with a lot of investment therefore there is a global good and a real argument to be made that if we don't stop it all over the world we. all in peril and the wild right now is not perilous state i want to ask you about africa what's happening typically in sub-saharan africa it seems of cove it has not surged
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there yet but i've heard it's a matter of when not if it is that the case and what is the access to vaccines in those countries. i think as far as africa goes i would i would hesitate to say that it has not hit yet i think this is what we were saying about india just a few months ago and i think there's been a there's been a lack of data we don't know it's i've been quoted as saying it's a hidden endemic we don't know exactly what's going on you know we have a lack of diagnostics so we don't have the testing that is of available in many countries you hear of pockets of people dying pockets of people sick and so i mean i think it's seeding at the moment and i'm very very concerned in fact terrified that we're waiting and waiting the india scenario we're hearing reports now from the seychelles of really serious outbreaks even though they actually have have had quite a few vaccinations we're hearing reports from sudan of health systems beginning to collapse and people you know desperately searching for oxygen so that is beginning to show you those are the indicators that are showing you that africa is creeping
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up to where india is now a quick point of data india and you know i stand to be corrected has vaccinated about $200000000.00 plus people out of about $1400000000.00 population africa has vaccinated less than $818000000.00 people for $1200000000.00 population so that shows you where we are and where we stand in terms of who has vaccines and who doesn't and where the need is right now there are no vaccines in view for africa for the next few months i can say that without fear of contradiction because india needs to look after her own support her own citizens yes and of course they have a fire burning and you have to put out your own fire before you go off obviously and try and put out of this but where are the rich countries of the world who are hoarding vaccines where are the the u.k.'s and the us and the e.u. is doing quite a bit of their fair share we need exactly what krishna said we need the rich countries of the world to have vaccines to share and to share vaccines now it is
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not a waiver or sharing issue is a post in every last 30 seconds from bangor to the world what he had to say. to pick up what your d. said and to pick up a question i said look we need the u.s. to act immediately the short term solution give us the tools that you don't want you don't like astra zeneca give it to us we'll take it right in the long term solution fund factories near term solution was companies you funded to share that technology with manufacturers who can begin and use it you know this is not funny anyone that this is sick what's happening in india is we need to get to happen to every unvaccinated society whether it's in sub-saharan africa or southeast asia and if we don't act we have to explain that to our children and i have grandchildren and i would love to see what they have to say that said that separate today i thank you so much more see you next time on the story.
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the world of high frequency share trading exposed high and there's an engine that was basically trading a kind of lost $30000000.00 it was a terrifying experience artificial intelligence has raised the stakes and risks on the money markets these markets go through history we are opening up the possibility for instability for no. money books coming soon on al-jazeera. cultivating food is the foundation of human civilization but food today is a global commodity if the industry did not make money how many people would be out and how it's cultivated
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a contentious debate public interest in the public safety is definitely not taking precedent and in-depth examination into our great business and the conflicting interests that play industry doesn't want any regulation interest want to put the products on the market the price of progress on al-jazeera in the midst of war a generation grew up in exile more than 13000000 syrians that's half the pre-war population remain displaced inside and outside the country and as the conflict enters its 2nd decade with no political settlement in sight there could be further displacement home for many has been informal camps like this in neighboring countries and lebanon's bekaa valley life has been one of poverty and uncertainty. syria's economy is collapsing and international aid organizations are warning it is pushing millions deeper into poverty many are jobless and hungry the united nations says 60 percent or $12400000.00 syrians don't have regular access to enough food
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despite the battlefield being largely quiet for a year aid agencies say the daily suffering of syrians is worse than it has been a nearly any point throughout the conflict and the hardship has not stopped at syria's borders. israel pounds gaza with airstrikes hissing residential and government buildings while targeting hamas 44 palestinians have been killed. palestinian rockets meanwhile have rained down on israeli towns and cities killing at least 5.
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