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In the tussle between a local vaccine and an international vaccine , how does a government decide ?

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The whole world has been fighting with the covid – 19 situation for over an year now . The only thing all have been waiting desperately for is the “vaccine” for corona virus . And why not , when the corona virus has taken away numerous lives and ruined the livelihood of countless around the world . It has caused fear and global economic disruption . In such a worse situation , vaccine is viewed as the hope for them . But , as it is said , “God does not shower his  grace / blessings on us very often but when he gives he is bountiful” . We are in a quiet similar situation , earlier , we were yearning of a single vaccine but now we have got a number of these which have got the permission for emergency use in a large number of countries around the world.

              We , Indians should we proud of our nation . Our country has also made two vaccines namely , covaxin and covishield .

              For countries which have made vaccines in their country , the biggest question in front of them might be that whether they should opt for their local vaccine or go with the international vaccine .  India is also in a very similar situation .

               The government of such a nation ( India ) first of all , should ask themselves that if the government of a second country can take a risk with a vaccine of third country , then why can’t a country take risk with the vaccine of its own country .

                The question is of millions of lives , on one hand if they opted for local vaccine which was not permitted in any other country so far and if something bad happens all the fingers would have been pointed on them and on the other hand if they chose for the international vaccine , it would have been viewed as an insult of the hard work of the scientists of the nation that worked day and night .

                 So , the final way to get out of this situation is to form a committee comprising of the pioneers of the field and fix some justified parameters like cost per dosage , physical specification , cold chain storage requirement and amount of side-effects and compare the two on these parameters , then  the one which seems to be better should be opted .

                  Taking the case of India into consideration , the case can be best understood . The Government of India was also struck in a very similar situation . On one side , they had the international vaccine ( Pfizer Company ) while , on the other side they had the local vaccine ( Bharat Biotech ) , so , they compared the two vaccines and observed that the local vaccine was comparatively cheaper , more effective and easy to store . Hence , chose for the local vaccine , which seems to be the right decision .     

-Adhyan Srivastava

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