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to the surgeon Peter Cavadas it has been possible to criticize him for expressing an opinion in categorical terms about the vaccination strategy against Covid-19 without being an immunologist or epidemiologist. But what cannot be denied is his knowledge of healthcare problems in developing countries, where many of the patients he operates on when they would have been evicted in their place of origin.
Thus, in september 2020, the specialist was skeptical about the possibilities of the new vaccines against Covid-19 to put an end to the pandemic. The bulk of his artillery, as was customary at that time, was directed against the Government of Spain. “The result of mishandling the measures is more harmful to combat it than the virus itself, since it has low mortality”, he denounced, demanding an audit to find out why Spain was then the world leader in mortality.
However, it was the rest of the world that Cavadas was really worried about. “The fundamental problem is going to be more economic than health. The economic repercussion involves trying to control the spread of the virus, generating much more harmful economic damage than the health damage caused by the virus. It is a very difficult situation to manage (…) This is not going to end very well“, he explained during his visit to the facilities of the Valdehuesa Wild Fauna Museum (Castilla y León).
He then made his prediction: “First the rich part will be vaccinated of the world population and until the 5,000 or 6,000 million people in the world are vaccinated, it will take years. Poor parts of the world will be vaccinated much later and that will cause the pandemic to follow an asymmetric evolution around the world.”
Now, when two years have passed since the start of the pandemic and the second anniversary of the confinements in Europe is approaching, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms the black omen: more than 80% of populations in regions such as Africa remain unvaccinated against Covid and they have no sign of receiving a dose in the short term.
According to the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusthis jeopardizes hopes of controlling the pandemic in 2022. “Please fill the existing gap and end the pandemic,” he implored the G20 finance ministers, calling for a global investment of $60 billion.
That sum of money would be earmarked for the Acelerador ACT, the program with which the WHO and other agencies finance the distribution of vaccines, treatments, tests and other tools against COVID-19. “We are faced with a dilemma and that is that significant investments are needed at a time when many countries are feeling the bite [de la pandemia]”, Tedros added.
“The pandemic has not passed when there are 70,000 people dying a week from a disease that is treatable, when 83% of the population of Africa have not yet received a single vaccine“, he insists. “Health is an investment, not a cost”, he closed his appeal to political leaders.
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