READ or DOWNLOAD the full report here.
About a month has passed since the World Health Organization declared, “with great hope,” an end to the COVID-19 as a public health emergency even as it acknowledged that coronavirus is here to stay. “It is still killing and it is still changing.”
Four long, difficult, and challenge-ridden years into our changed lifestyles of living with COVID, we’re left with COVID scars that will hopefully remind and teach us that lessons must be learned, improvements implemented, healthcare support strengthened, democratic principles of transparency and accountability upheld, and the moral urgency of equity championed if we are to see ourselves better placed to manage the inevitable future health emergencies and pandemics.
From the last quarter of 2022 to mid-2023, Innovation for Change – East Asia undertook this co-created research project on the transparency and accountability of the procurement of Chinese-made vaccines in 11 countries in Asia. Using transparency and accountability as the entry point to further broaden discussions on vaccine equity and diplomacy, I4C-East Asia worked with 11 researchers across three Asian subregions – Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia – with the intention to probe into how access to vaccines played its part in vaccine equity (or inequity), diplomacy, transparency and accountability, as well as the initial reliance on Chinese-made vaccines.
The result of this undertaking, in collaboration with I4C-South Asia and I4C-Central Asia, is VACCINE EQUITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN ASIA: Realities and Dilemmas, a compilation of 11 country reports – on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, and Timor-Leste – and a report synthesis that highlights key research findings and recommendations.
We present to you the full report in English, with a series of infographics accompanying each country report (Simplified Chinese translations of the report synthesis and the series of infographics are available too).
May it shed light on some key on-the-ground lived experiences in each focus country as well as spur questions that demand responses from duty-bearers who we, in civil society, must continue to hold to account. The realizations, questions, and conversations spurred by the report, hopefully, lead to policy changes in our countries and the region greatly affected by COVID-19 and left exposed with long-standing and pre-existing societal, structural, and political inefficiencies requiring meaningful solutions.
Access the report synthesis and the series of infographics here.
综合报告 Synthesis available here.
Series of infographics in Simplified Chinese available here.
Email [email protected] for inquiries about this report.
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