If rich countries are willing to act decisively, I have a strategy that will allow us to work together and vaccinate the world
Time and again throughout history, perpetrators of injustice have absolved themselves and justified miserliness and inaction by blaming the victim. Amid allegations of African culpability for the Omicron outbreak and complaints from the global north about vaccine hesitancy and low take-up in the global south, 2021 has seen this shameful story being told anew.
But the new variant is not Africa’s fault. Responsibility starts with the governments of wealthy nations that stockpiled hundreds of millions of vaccine doses and that, even when warned about the failure to vaccinate more vulnerable parts of the world, did too little as the virus mutated.
Gordon Brown is the WHO ambassador for global health financing, and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
