SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AP) – When thousands of people in the European Union roll up their sleeves last month to receive a vaccination against the coronavirus, one corner of the continent was left isolated and deserted: the Balkans.
Balkan countries are struggling to access COVID-19 vaccines from multiple companies and programs, but most countries in the southeastern periphery of Europe are still waiting for their first vaccines to arrive, with no set timetable for the start of their national vaccination actions.
What is already clear is that Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – home to about 20 million people – will lag far behind the 27 countries of the EU and Great Britain in their efforts to obtain immunity from herds. by quickly vaccinating a large number of them. people.
North Macedonian epidemiologist Dragan Danilovski compared the current vaccine situation in the Western Balkans to the inequalities seen during the sinking of the Titanic in 1911.
“The wealthy have seized all available lifeboats and left the less fortunate,” Danilovski told broadcaster TV 24.
The sentiment facing the world towards the most serious health crisis in a century has gained momentum in the Western Balkans – a term used to describe the Balkan states that want to join but are still not part of the EU. It is actively promoted by pro-Russian politicians in a region wedged between Western and Russian spheres of influence.
“I felt like the bottom of my hopes for a return to a normal life had fallen away,” said 50-year-old Belma Djonko in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, describing the emotional ramifications of hearing thousands of doctors, nurses and the elderly people across the EU had received the first doses of a vaccine developed by the American drug company Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, while her war-ravaged country awaits.
Many Balkan countries are pinning their hopes on COVAX, a global vaccine purchasing agency set up by the World Health Organization and global charities to address growing inequality in vaccine distribution. COVAX has struck deals on several promising COVID-19 vaccines, but for now it only covers doses to inoculate 20% of a country’s population.
Among other politically unstable post-communist Balkan countries that have long professed to want to join the EU, but still fail to meet the conditions to achieve that goal, Bosnia has reserved vaccines through COVAX and expects to receive the first doses in April at the earliest.
That seems like an eternity from now on.
“In the meantime, I have to keep depriving my 83-year-old father of the company and love for his grandchildren,” said Djonko, referring to the low-tech but heartbreaking defense against the virus, which keeps the elderly isolated from potential sources of infection.
Serbia is the only country in the Western Balkans to receive vaccinations so far, with deliveries of Pfizer-BioNTech and the Sputnik V vaccine developed by Russia. However, Serbia does not have enough doses to start mass vaccinations as only 25,000 injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,400 of the Russian vaccine have come in.
Serbia’s vaccination program began on December 24, three days before the EU, when Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received a dose in an attempt to increase public confidence in the vaccine, as many Balkan governments are also struggling to build a strong anti-vaccination movement. to counteract.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, recently agreed on a € 70 million ($ 86 million) package to help Balkan countries access the vaccines, in addition to the € 500 million ($ 616 million) block has already contributed to COVAX.
“During the pandemic, the EU has shown that we treat the Western Balkans as privileged partners,” said Oliver Varhelyi, EU Enlargement Commissioner.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the executive committee, says the EU will have more vaccines than it needs for its residents by 2021 and indicated that the bloc could share its additional supplies with the Western Balkans and countries in Africa.
But in the Balkans, the prevailing impression is that the bloc has failed again in the underdeveloped European region. In the words of Albanian political analyst Skender Minxhozi, the EU has reached the moment of “hang up or shut up”.
“Show us that you care about us, or don’t be surprised if some of us heed the call of Russian or Chinese Pied Pies traversing the world with bags full of vaccines,” Minxhozi said.
The apparent lack of Western solidarity during the pandemic is being exploited by local pro-Russian politicians to portray the EU as purely profit-driven. Russia and China, meanwhile, are vying for political and economic influence.
“I trust (the Russian vaccine), I don’t trust the commercial stories coming out of the West,” said Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, before being hospitalized with the coronavirus.
In the Albanian capital Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama demanded an apology from the Russian embassy after it published a message on social media that Moscow was ready to immediately supply Albania with the Sputnik V vaccine, although that shot has not been certified in the EU.
“As a person I felt indignant and as a European I was 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 at the same time as other Europeans”, Rama said as I was contracted to purchase 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Some believe the postponement of vaccination could prove to be a blessing in disguise in a region where years of declining trust in government and public institutions have bolstered the voices of virus deniers and vaccine skeptics.
“I can’t wait for life to return to normal and for that we need a successful vaccine,” said Belma Gazibara, an infectious disease specialist who works at COVID-19 hospital in Sarajevo.
Gazibara says watching the coronavirus vaccine rollout elsewhere in Europe will increase Bosniaks’ desire to give the chance too.
“If, as I strongly hope, the approved vaccines deliver on their promise elsewhere in Europe, I expect uptake to be much higher than it is now,” she said.
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Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Konstantin Testorides, in Skopje, Macedonia, contributed.