Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are still waiting to receive their first vaccine shipments, while rollouts in Albania and Northern Macedonia have so far been limited to a few hundred people.
They have joined the COVAX program, which is aiming to make access to vaccines more equitable across the world, but the scheme's limited supply means its primary focus is on the 92 low and middle income countries that can't afford vaccines without funding and the Western Balkan countries are not among those. As self-financing COVAX members, they are set to receive 850,000 doses of a combination of coronavirus vaccines -- but when these might arrive is unclear.
"Europe has really neglected the region for such a long time and it makes the region vulnerable to other external actors," she said,"This is where Russia comes in. This is where China comes in. This is where Turkey comes in, and they have filled in the void in different aspects."Faced with the possibility of a long wait, Serbia, the largest of the six Western Balkan countries, took matters into its own hands and looked for vaccines elsewhere.
Carragher said the deal has been a win-win situation."There's definitely a clear benefit for Serbia, not only reputationally, by being the top vaccinator on the continent of Europe, but also a legitimization of the government, which has been backsliding democratically," she said."But here, you know, whenever you're the first in Europe, it looks like you're doing something good.
The vaccines are not China's first venture into the Western Balkans either -- in the past decade, it has invested heavily in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, financing large infrastructure and resource projects, including highways in Bosnia and Herzegovina and mines and factories in Serbia. It has also opened Confucius Institutes and university sinology departments across the region.
The donations are a symbolic gestures. But in this historically volatile, vulnerable region, symbols like this matter.
Philippines Latest News, Philippines Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.