Editorial

Sri Lanka’s once exemplary all-island immunisation campaigns, devolved and decentralised to the very grassroots long before Provincial Councils were introduced, and hailed by world health authorities for decades, came a cropper with the recent COVID-19 vaccination programme. The blame has to be placed entirely at the doorstep of the role political interference played in the botched exercise.

Everyone appreciates the fact that vaccines were at a premium, globally. Foolish Government legislators did not see the writing on the wall last year when the virus broke out in the country and failed to realise that mass vaccinations was the key answer. They dismissed that option and pussyfooted with placing early orders. Then there was an over-reliance on one source – India, without anticipating the possibility of default if and when that country had to cater to a massive domestic population also crying for the vaccine.

The country’s continuing, seemingly suicidal anti-West foreign policy has not helped in the procurement process. Frantic telephone calls are being made to private individuals to reach out to their personal contacts in Western capitals to secure consignments as the situation was becoming desperate.

When the first planeloads of vaccines did start trickling in, it saw the true colours of the political authorities kick in. The public was permitted one mad rush to elbow others out of the way and use every contact in the book to get vaccinated.

The Presidential Task Force handling the programme abandoned the recommendations of health experts and opted to adopt the classic indigenous system that operates for getting a government job, admission to a state school or a diplomatic posting — go behind a politician. The politicians relished their hour of glory inviting people to have tea and cakes with the vaccination. Some members of the Task Force photographed themselves with visiting VIPs and had them sent to the media for good measure.

All this would have been par for the course if only a parallel system recommended by the health experts was in place. Our front page story today refers to the sheer disappointment of the medical specialists who served in the advisory committees on communicable diseases (NACCD) and saw their recommendations thrown aside to pamper to the egos of those who hijacked the programme.

The health experts’ recommendations were based on what has been tried and tested successfully in other countries without political interference i.e. to immunise the elderly first and with them the frontline health workers. They refer to the wastage of 200,000 AstraZeneca vaccines; why trainee nurses were not vaccinated (the nurses unions rightly says the vaccine should have been given to their immediate family members with whom they live, to arrest the spread of the virus to them, and from them). They ask why those with co-morbidities (those with other medical conditions) were also not prioritised to prevent a steep spike in deaths.

No one in the health sector knows, or will tell you who changed the experts’ advice. Some believe it was partly due to advice that the collapsing economy had to be kept ticking. That explains how suddenly, over-30s were considered for the vaccine on the basis that they were the working population.

Typically, the current procurement process is also riddled with talk of corruption. While the Presidential Secretariat is making every effort to get vaccines down, others are reportedly looking for ways and means to make hay while the virus spreads. Again, Chinese vaccines are at the centre of controversy within the medical field. Transparency is minimal and even those in the Health Ministry are muttering under their breath at the shenanigans taking place elsewhere.

With infections still spreading, some 600,000 people who rushed to get the first jab of the AstraZeneca COVISHIELD consignment are waiting for the booster. Will they get the second dose of the same vaccine or a matchable vaccine, or will they have to start all over again? Though the United States has said it will send 600,000 vaccines to Sri Lanka, no one is still very sure if these are the AstraZeneca product. Japan has announced a list of countries to which it will send the AstraZeneca vaccine, but Sri Lanka is not among them.

Still, the Government must even at this late stage work out a priority plan based on the schedule of the new arrival of vaccines. This has to be based on what the medical specialists say and not the ad-hocism we witnessed. Countries that laid down the rules for vaccination by the health experts and had a disciplined lockdown, not the sham exercise we see in Sri Lanka today, are already enjoying the fruits of their actions.

If the Government intends to continue with the same haphazard ‘vaccine goes by favour’ methodology with the next immunisation campaign, as it did with the first, then Sri Lanka’s defeat of the COVID-19 virus is a long way coming.

A Poson plea

 ”Tissa, Tissa,” called out the son of Emperor Ashoka, one of history’s greatest humanists to the King of Lanka Devanampiyatissa on that day in the month of Poson in the 3rd century BCE. He asked the monarch who was on a hunting trip in the forest around Mihintale ‘what are you doing to the poor animals’. Thus began the introduction of the sublime teachings of the Buddha to Sri Lanka’s majority of the people who have embraced its tenets ever since.

Next week, despite the lockdown due to the COVID-19 virus, they will celebrate the occasion in their own pious way, like they did Vesak last month.

A Government such as the incumbent one has proclaimed it will be administered on Buddhist philosophy. One of the fundamental teachings of the Enlightened One is to be compassionate to all creatures that have life. It behoves this Government therefore, if it is to walk the talk, to dust off the draft Animal Welfare Bill that must have got pigeon-holed somewhere, probably in the Justice Ministry, and have it implemented as soon as possible.

This draft has been waiting for over a decade to ensure passage to law. Many non-Buddhist countries have already given constitutional status to animal rights, but Sri Lanka cannot even pass an ordinary law despite its historical animal-friendly, socio-cultural and religious heritage. What is the Government waiting for?