I had my COVID-19 vaccine booster jab this week. I am one of the lucky ones. In poor countries, the majority of people have not even had their first dose of the vaccine. The omicron variant that is threatening our recovery and our return to normal life is the direct result of this inequality. The failure of our multilateral system to deliver on equal access to vaccines brought us to the nightmare scenario of today. Vaccine equity would have saved us, had the world moved in a different direction in February 2020. Instead of working together, competition took us in opposite directions. Omicron is the face of this inequality. The new variant encapsulates what has gone wrong in the world’s response to the COVID-19 virus. The disparity in vaccination rates around the world is the best example of this stark inequality. In the developed world, rich countries have the highest rates of vaccination. In Europe, for example, the rates range between 87.3 percent of people fully vaccinated in Portugal and 71.7 percent in Norway, while Japan’s figure is 77.6 percent, Canada’s is 76.6 percent and America’s is 60 percent. Compare this to Africa, which has the lowest vaccination rates of any continent in the world. While about 74 percent of the shots so far administered worldwide have been in high and upper-middle-income countries, only 0.8 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries. In Africa, just 11 percent of the population have received at least one dose. In South Sudan, 1.2 percent are fully vaccinated, in Burkina Faso it is 1.5 percent, in Ethiopia 1.3 percent, and in Congo and Burundi it is just 0.1 percent. This is not acceptable. True, there are a few African countries that are better than the ones mentioned above, like South Africa, where 25.2 percent are fully vaccinated, and Rwanda (26.7 percent), but these are the exceptions. In our region, just 1.2 percent are fully vaccinated in Yemen. The World Health Organization and many scientists have been saying for more than a year that we need to vaccinate the whole world. We cannot vaccinate only the rich countries and think we are safe. They repeated what has become a mantra: Nobody is safe until we are all safe. Rich countries last year rushed to buy the vaccines as if there was no tomorrow. Their vaccine hoarding emptied the coffers of the vaccine producers, while vaccine nationalism added to the inequality. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in March wrote an article for the Guardian titled, “A ‘me-first’ approach to vaccination won’t defeat Covid.” But no one was listening. The G20, under the leadership of Saudi Arabia and as early as November 2020, tackled the issue of vaccine inequality head-on. King Salman said in his opening remarks to G20 leaders that they must work toward “affordable and equitable access to vaccines.” But when these vaccines were rolled out, they were not affordable to the majority of the world and there was no equitable access to them. When I read in the spring that one rich country had bought 11 doses of vaccine per person for its population, I knew that the world had to speak up. At the UN, I invited a group of concerned countries to form a core group of vaccine equity advocates and we worked on a Political Declaration on Equitable Global Access to COVID-19 Vaccines. The negotiations were hard. Developed countries watered down our original text. They did not want reference to vaccine nationalism and they did not want to use the term “vaccines are a public good.” They replaced it with “vaccination is a public good.” The difference between the two is huge. Vaccination relates to the process and not the product as a right. Vaccines had become huge business, with billions of dollars of profit to be made. We accepted the compromises because we wanted the world to speak with one voice, so we wanted a consensus on the issue. In the end, we made it. We got 183 countries out of 193 at the UN to support the declaration. It was a great victory and a good moment for our world and for multilateralism. We showed the world that we can work together when our future is hanging in the balance. These 183 countries pledged, through the political declaration, to “treat COVID-19 vaccination as a global public good by ensuring affordable, equitable and fair access to vaccines for all.” They also committed to “ensuring transparent and fair access to vaccines to those at a risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms.” It called on the G20 to “further collaborate with the United Nations and the international community to upscale support and funding for vaccine production and distribution to defeat the pandemic and put the world back on track while leaving no one behind.” It also called on the G7 to make vaccine equity and accessibility a top priority at the summit that was held in England this summer. The declaration was hailed as a welcome sign of solidarity — of the world getting together to defeat the pandemic. But it did not change the situation on the ground. This fall, developed countries started giving their populations a third vaccine dose, known as a booster shot, and started vaccinating children, while many other countries had not even offered their populations a first jab. This brought new outrage at the inequality. Ghebreyesus branded the move to offer booster shots “ethically objectionable.” In August, the WHO proposed a global moratorium on booster shots until the end of September to make sure progress was made toward the goal of vaccinating at least 10 percent of the population of every country in the world. Ghebreyesus warned that, while the supply of vaccines is limited, more doses in the arms of the already vaccinated means fewer doses for people who have not yet had their first. He argued that the more unvaccinated people we have around the world, the “more opportunity the virus has to spread and evolve with more dangerous variants.” He was proved right. What we see today with the danger of the omicron variant is everybody’s nightmare situation: A new, highly transmissible variant that may be less responsive to vaccines, while not enough doses are available to developing countries to protect their populations. It is true that many vaccine-producing countries have generously donated millions of doses to developing nations and that they are scaling up their donations, but this problem cannot be solved by charity. Vaccine equity should not be a charitable enterprise. A serious commitment to ending this pandemic and stopping the emergence of new and dangerous variants should start by putting the world on a war footing. A new multilateralism is needed. The world needs a new strategy, with a new global approach in which governments, pharmaceutical companies, the medical industry, supply chain companies and the media work together as one. Important steps are necessary for this to work. First, governments must work together and not compete with each other on who buys more vaccine doses. The sharing of vaccines with those countries that are lacking doses is the kind of spirit that is needed now. Switzerland offered a good example last month, when it stepped back in the queue for vaccines and gave COVAX the priority. This is the spirit of cooperation and sharing that will defeat the virus. Second, vaccine production in the developing world must be accelerated in the few places that have already started. New production sites must also open around the world to increase vaccine production capacity and accelerate distribution. Helping poor countries with their medical infrastructure and logistics to increase their capacity to deliver the vaccines is as important as acquiring the doses. Third, waiving intellectual property rights, at least partially, and sharing technological and scientific knowledge is a very important prerequisite to ramping up production in the developing world. Pharmaceutical companies must do the right thing. It is time to think of the public good and of the recovery of the planet. It is time to prioritize public health over money. Fourth, there needs to be global public information campaigns to promote vaccines and convince people of their efficacy and safety, while at the same time fighting the disinformation that has put some people off getting vaccinated. This infodemic is as dangerous as the pandemic; defeating it, and ending vaccine hesitancy, is the first step toward ending this pandemic. The omicron variant is the latest threat to our world, but it will not be the last unless we decide enough is enough. The president of Moderna, Stephen Hoge, agreed with White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci that he expected the pandemic to end as early as next year. For this to be true, we need to put an end to the half measures that have extended the life of the virus. The world must do better because our survival depends on it. The best place to start is with real vaccine equity. Amal Mudallali is the Ambassador of Lebanon at the United Nations in New York. The views expressed in this article are her own and they do not represent the Lebanese government’s. Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view