Illustration: Laxman Deep / Pixabay
The race to inoculate Southasia's populations has been marked with delays, cost constraints, red-tapism and mistrust – shedding light on the severity of global and regional vaccine inequality. A crucial concern throughout the region has been the issue of cost; the prices that governments, and in some cases individuals, are paying for the vaccines.
While the recent news cycle has been inundated with reports of fresh supplies of vaccines, important conversations about the economics of vaccine access and availability remain unclear or misleading, given that public procurement processes for vaccines have been largely opaque, mainly through the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).