SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AP) – When thousands of people across the European Union started rolling up their sleeves last month to get a coronavirus vaccine, one corner of the continent was left behind, feeling isolated and abandoned: Balkans.
Balkan nations have been struggling to gain access to COVID-19 vaccines from various companies and programs, but most nations on the periphery of south-eastern Europe are still waiting for their first vaccines to arrive, without a set timetable for the start of their vaccines. national vaccination initiatives.
What is already clear is that Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – home to some 20 million people – will lag far behind the 27 countries of the EU and Britain in efforts to achieve collective immunity , quickly vaccinating a large number of its people.
North Macedonian epidemiologist Dragan Danilovski compared the current vaccine situation in the Western Balkans with the inequalities seen during the sinking of the Titanic in 1911.
“The rich have grabbed every available lifeboat, leaving the less fortunate behind,” Danilovski told TV 24.
The feeling that the world is facing the most serious health crisis in a century has gained strength in the Western Balkans – a term used to identify Balkan states that wish to join but are not yet part of the EU. It is being actively fed by pro-Russian politicians in a region sandwiched between the spheres of Western and Russian influence.
“I felt like the bottom of my hope of returning to a normal life had fallen,” said Belma Djonko, 50, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, describing the emotional consequences of hearing that thousands of doctors, nurses and the elderly in the entire EU received the first doses of a vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, while its war-torn country continues to wait.
Many countries in the Balkans pin their hopes on COVAX, a global vaccine procurement agency created by the World Health Organization and global charity groups to address growing inequities in vaccine distribution. COVAX has secured deals for several promising COVID-19 vaccines, but for now, it will only cover doses to inoculate 20% of a country’s population.
Alongside other politically unstable post-communist Balkan nations that have long professed their desire to join the EU, but still fail to fulfill the conditions to achieve that goal, Bosnia has booked vaccines through COVAX and hopes to start receiving its first doses in April at least.
This 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,” said Djonko, referring to the low-tech but painful defense against the virus, keeping the elderly isolated from potential sources of infection. .
Serbia is the only country in the Western Balkans to receive vaccine injections so far, with deliveries from Pfizer-BioNTech and the Sputnik V vaccine developed in Russia. However, Serbia does not have enough doses to start mass vaccination, as only 25,000 injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,400 of the Russian vaccine have arrived.
Serbia’s vaccination program started on December 24, three days before the EU, when Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received a dose in an attempt to boost public confidence in the vaccine, as many Balkan governments are also struggling to contain a strong anti-vaccination movement.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, recently agreed to a € 70 million ($ 86 million) package to help Balkan nations gain access to vaccines in addition to € 500 million ($ 616 million) that the bloc has already contributed to COVAX.
“Throughout the pandemic, the EU has shown that we treat the Western Balkans as privileged partners,” said European Commissioner for Enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the Executive Committee, says the EU will have more vaccines than necessary for its residents in 2021 and indicated that the bloc could share its extra supplies with the Western Balkans and African countries.
Still, in the Balkans, the dominant impression is that the bloc has once again failed Europe’s underdeveloped region. In the words of Albanian political analyst Skender Minxhozi, the EU has reached its “open or close” moment.
“Show that you care about us or don’t be surprised if some of us follow the call of Russian or Chinese flutists who are traveling the world with pockets full of their vaccines,” said Minxhozi.
The apparent lack of Western solidarity in the midst of the pandemic is being exploited by local pro-Russian politicians to portray the EU as exclusively for profit. Russia and China, for their part, dispute political and economic influence.
“I trust (in the Russian vaccine), I do not trust the commercial narratives that come from the West,” said Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Serb leader, before being hospitalized with coronavirus.
In the Albanian capital of Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama demanded an apology from the Russian embassy after she posted a message on social media that Moscow was ready to immediately supply Albania with the Sputnik V vaccine, although this injection is not certified in the EU.
“As a person, I was outraged and as a European I felt ashamed, while as Prime Minister of Albania I felt more motivated than ever to not allow Albanians to be excluded from the possibility of being protected simultaneously with other Europeans,” said Rama in announcing a contract to purchase 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Some believe that the delay in vaccination could be a blessing in disguise in a region where years of declining confidence in the government and public institutions have amplified the voices 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 that watching the launch of the coronavirus vaccine elsewhere in Europe will increase Bosnians’ desire to receive the vaccines as well.
“If, as I really hope, the approved vaccines keep their promise in other parts of Europe, I hope that the absorption will be much greater than it would have been now,” she said.
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Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania and Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, Macedonia contributed.