SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AP) – When thousands of people across the European Union began rolling up their sleeves last month to receive a coronavirus vaccine, a corner of the continent was left behind, feeling isolated and abandoned: the Balkans.
Balkan nations have struggled to access COVID-19 vaccines from various companies and programs, but most nations in the southeastern periphery of Europe are still waiting for the first vaccines to arrive, without a firm timetable for the start of their national inoculation initiatives.
What is already clear is that Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Serbia, home to some 20 million people, will be far behind the 27 nations of the EU and Britain in their efforts to achieve herd immunity quickly vaccinating a large number of people.
North Macedonian epidemiologist Dragan Danilovski compared the current vaccine situation in the Western Balkans to the inequalities observed during the sinking of the Titanic in 1911.
“The rich have taken all available lifeboats, leaving behind the less fortunate,” Danilovski told TV 24.
The feeling that the world is facing its worst health crisis in a century has gained strength in the Western Balkans, a term used to identify Balkan states that want to join but are not yet part of the EU. Pro-Russian politicians actively grant them in a region located between Western and Russian spheres of influence.
“I felt like the bottom line was falling short of my hopes of returning to a normal life,” said Belma Djonko, 50, in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, who described the emotional consequences of feeling that thousands of doctors, nurses and seniors across the EU had received the first doses of a vaccine developed by US drug maker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech while their war-ravaged country keeps waiting.
Many Balkan nations are fixing their hopes on COVAX, a global vaccine procurement agency set up by the World Health Organization and global charities to address growing inequalities in vaccine distribution. COVAX has secured bids for several promising COVID-19 vaccines, but for now it will only cover doses to inoculate 20% of a country’s population.
Along with other politically unstable post-communist Balkan nations that have long professed their desire to join the EU but still fail to meet the conditions to achieve this goal, Bosnia has booked vaccines through COVAX and hopes to start receiving first doses in April.
It seems like an eternity from now on.
“In the meantime, I must continue to deprive my 83-year-old father of the company and the love of his grandchildren,” Djonko said, referring to the low-tech but heartbreaking defense against the virus, keeping the elderly isolated of possible sources of infection.
Serbia is the only nation in the Western Balkans to have received vaccines so far, as it is free of Pfizer-BioNTech and the Sputnik V vaccine developed by Russia. However, Serbia does not have enough doses to start mass vaccines, as only 25,000 shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,400 of the Russian vaccine have arrived.
Serbia’s vaccination program began on December 24, three days before the EU, when Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received a dose to try to increase public confidence in the vaccine, as many Balkan governments are also struggling to counter. a strong anti-vaccination movement.
The EU executive group, the European Commission, recently agreed on a € 70 million ($ 86 million) package to help the Balkan countries access vaccines, in addition to the € 500 million (616 million). dollars) that the blog has already contributed to COVAX.
“Throughout the pandemic, the EU has shown that we treat the Western Balkans as a privileged partner,” said Oliver Varhelyi, EU enlargement commissioner.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the Executive Committee, says the EU will have more vaccines than needed for its residents in 2021 and indicated that the bloc could share its additional supplies with the Western Balkans and African countries.
In the Balkans, however, the prevailing impression is that the bloc has once again failed in the underdeveloped European region. In the words of Albanian political analyst Skender Minxhozi, the EU has reached its point of “shut up or shut up”.
“Either show us that you care about us or don’t be surprised if some of us follow the call of Russian or Chinese bagpipers crossing the world with their pockets full of shots,” Minxhozi said.
The apparent lack of Western solidarity in the midst of the pandemic is being exploited by local Russian politicians to portray the EU as the only profit-oriented one. Meanwhile, Russia and China are vying for political and economic influence.
“I trust (the Russian vaccine), I do not trust the commercial narratives that come from the West,” said Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik before he was hospitalized with coronavirus.
In the Albanian capital of Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama apologized to the Russian embassy after posting a message on social media that Moscow was ready to immediately supply Sputnik V vaccine to Albania, although this feature it is not certified in the EU.
“As a person I felt outraged and as a European I felt ashamed, while as Prime Minister of Albania I felt more motivated than ever not to allow Albanians to be excluded from the possibility of being protected simultaneously with other Europeans.” said Rama as he announced a contract to buy 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Some believe that delayed vaccination may result in a blessing in disguise in a region where years of declining confidence in government and public institutions have amplified the voice of virus deniers and vaccine skeptics.
“I can’t wait for life to return to normal and for that to happen, we need a successful vaccine,” said Belma Gazibara, an infectious disease specialist who works at Sarajevo’s COVID-19 hospital.
Gazibara says seeing the launch of the coronavirus vaccine elsewhere in Europe will increase the desire of Bosnians to receive the shots as well.
“If, as I firmly hope, approved vaccines live up to their promise elsewhere in Europe, I hope the uptake is much higher than it would have been now,” he said.
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Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Llazar Semini collaborated in Tirana, Albania and Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, Macedonia.