LETTERS: The world is celebrating the news of Covid-19 vaccines being approved for mass distribution, but questions are arising as to how affordable and accessible they will be.
In the process of getting ready to start vaccination, vaccines imported and stored across the Southeast Asia region will have to be closely monitored to ensure that they reach their intended recipients.
Local authorities may need to be present at vaccine stations to ensure that there are no opportunities for corruption or theft.
Should any vaccine go missing during delivery, it bears the risk of wealthy people in positions of power to sell them to the highest bidder and unregulated reproducers.
In the Philippines, for example, counterfeit rabies vaccines have found their way into legitimate supply chains and required entire batches to be quarantined.
This is very likely to happen with Covid-19 vaccines in the distant future due to limited legal supply.
Furthermore, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes that falsified medical products are often produced in poor or unhygienic conditions by unqualified personnel.
Due to the intense requirements for storing effective Covid-19 vaccines and the regional certainty that only a handful of people will be immunised in Southeast Asia next year, a sudden influx of poorly-reproduced vaccines can have detrimental effects to public health and result in a more devastating wave of new infections.
As such, local authorities need to implement public information campaigns that encourage residents to only be immunised in authorised medical centres, and be ready to quickly crackdown on illegal vendors that can pop up across communities and online.
Singapore is the first Southeast Asian country to recently approve the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and Changi airport is being positioned as a hub for regional distribution.
While the city-state adheres to strict laws, Singapore must encourage cooperation through such instruments as the Asean Plan of Action in Combating Transnational Crime (2016-2025) when delivering vaccines to larger and developing neighbours.
It will be critical for regional and national authorities to share intelligence and resources in this early stage to prevent the formation of illegal production and distribution channels.
There are further avenues for Covid-19 vaccine distribution and official production which require similar cooperation.
For example, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang has recently pledged Covid-19 vaccines for the Mekong countries, and Thailand's Siam Bioscience aims to set up local manufacturing facilities for AstraZeneca's vaccine.
In this instance, protection of the vaccine's intellectual property and harsh penalties for offenders must be upheld in the name of public health and safety.
The people and governments of Southeast Asia have made some remarkable achievements in minimising the risk of Covid-19 infections in the region and definitely serve as role models for other countries to follow.
They should therefore not lose the critical progress they have made to the greed and self-interest of criminal syndicates who will profit off the pandemic.
Zandre Van Straten
Webster University, Thailand
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times