 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. April 7th is World Health Day. The significance of this day is being felt now more than ever as we stand in the midst of a pandemic. With the number of COVID-19 infections surging again across the world, it is clear that the only defense is hurt immunity through mass vaccinations. But access to vaccines against COVID-19 remains largely unequal. The World Health Organization in its campaign this year has highlighted that the world is an unequal one. Some people are able to live healthier lives and have better access to health services than others entirely due to the conditions in which they are born, grow, live, work, and age. The pandemic has made these inequalities clearly visible, particularly in the distribution of vaccines. Vaccinationalism has led to a handful of countries in the Global North hoarding most of the world's vaccine supplies. The Global North has secured more vaccines than they require enough to vaccinate the populations three times over. Canada, for instance, has enough vaccines to vaccinate its citizens five times. The Global North, with less than 14% of the world's population, has secured more than half the total anticipated vaccines. As a result, in North America for every 100 people, over 30 vaccine doses have been delivered. In Europe, this number is around 19. However, in Africa, less than one vaccine dose has been delivered per 100 people as of April 6. It is estimated that in welfare countries, mass immunization is likely by mid of 2022. However, in poorer economies, mass immunization is unlikely to happen before 2024 if it happens at all. These countries could see as many as 2.5 million avoidable deaths because of this delay. Meanwhile, big pharma companies are unwilling to share their vaccine technologies with the world. Over 100 member countries in the World Trade Organization are supporting the proposal of suspending patents on COVID vaccines and medicines, which would make it possible to expand production. But the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and their allies are blocking this from happening. Profits are being placed above lives. If you look at which countries have been vaccinated, you will find that the world in data has this chart. And it shows very clearly that the countries which have vaccinated a large number of its population in percentage terms are not the ones manufacturing or exporting vaccines for others. They are the ones who are really only producing for themselves. And this is the United States, UK, parts of European Union. These are the countries who have actually produced vaccines for themselves. So if we look at which countries have supplied the vaccines and if we look at, for instance, the three countries who supplied the bulk of the vaccines, and you have a chart here, which shows that it is really only three countries which have supplied vaccines. But if we look at the vaccine production in the world, and again, we have from Airfinity, which supplies a lot of this data, you will see that the number of companies which have produced these vaccines, for instance, you have Pfizer, you have Pfizer, BioNTech vaccines, and you have also the modern vaccines produced in the United States or for the United States. We don't know where they are being produced. Is it only in the United States, but elsewhere as well. And you will see there is hardly any export to other countries, some to Israel, its ally, and some to a few European countries, but otherwise it's not being vaccinated. This is not being exported in very large numbers to any other country. And this is something that the World Health Organization Director General said a few days back, that what is happening is morally reprehensible. It's grotesque that countries which are sitting on vaccines, are vaccinating their own people or refusing to share the vaccine with others, that we are not only seeing the rise of vaccine nationalism at the world level, we are seeing a degree of vaccine selfishness that we have never seen before, particularly at a time when the global scenario is such that unless we inoculate the population of the world, the bulk of the population in the world, we are not going to stop the pandemic. It's not going to stop at national boundaries. And if we do not successfully fight the pandemic at the global level, then the global economy is not going to recover. The COVAX initiative of the World Health Organization, which was supposed to provide vaccines to poor countries, also stands neglected. Despite the fact that the majority of the world's countries signed onto the COVAX Alliance, vaccines are not being distributed to the global south in sufficient numbers. COVAX had a target of acquiring 2 billion doses by 2021 and vaccinating about 1 billion people, which is one-fifth of the target population in the developing countries. Even with these modest targets, the COVAX platform has reached only about 50% of its target and it is woefully short of funds as rich countries focus on holding 2 to 3 times their needs. We have a scenario if we all work together and that's a real possibility. We can fight the pandemic much better. We are refusing to do that. And the second plank in that fight would be that there is huge amount of vaccine capability, production capability idling in the world because not everybody's vaccines have been successful. But there is no interest in sharing the technology with countries or with production facilities or with companies who don't have their own vaccine, utilizing it for immediately producing more vaccines in the world needs. This is not being done because profit motive trumps everything else and therefore intellectual property and this is not patent. It's intellectual property, you know how, what you need to scale up production, those are the things which are not being accepted. If you take the WTO platform, the rich countries, basically because of their pharmaceutical companies have opposed it, opposed it to the main. Therefore, this proposal by Indians of Africa has failed. It's not getting any traction. So we have on one hand that as a scenario that is standing in front of us of extreme selfishness coupled with looking at the vaccine producing profits for some countries, companies, Pfizer and Moderna looking at tens of billions of dollars of profit for the next one to years. So that is what is standing in the way of really fighting pandemic globally together. And if we want to fight it together, yes, it can be fought. People's organizations across the globe are marking this day to strengthen the demand for free vaccines for all and an end to medical apartheid. The need to hold all non-essential activities is being reinforced in countries with a number of cases arising. Movements and organizations are also calling for suspension of public debt that poor nations have with wealthier ones, incentivizing the production of healthy foods and suspending war related activities, police oppression and violent evictions. Moreover, the people are also demanding an end to all unilateral course measures imposed by the United States and its allies, which seriously affect people's access to food, medicine, protective equipment and even fuel, all of which are fundamental to combat the pandemic. On this day, people's movements and organizations are standing together to reaffirm their commitment to building a more just and equal world where life is put through different processes.