A pandemic does not end in one country while raging in another.
Em janeiro de 2021, o diretor-geral da Organização Mundial da Saúde, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, ergueu a voz em Genebra para nomear uma ameaça que crescia em silêncio dentro da própria resposta à pandemia: o nacionalismo vacinal. Enquanto países ricos acumulavam doses muito além das suas necessidades imediatas, nações mais pobres aguardavam à margem, e o vírus continuava a circular sem fronteiras. Ghebreyesus não falou apenas de justiça — falou de lógica: uma pandemia não termina num país enquanto arde noutro, e proteger apenas os ricos é, no fim, não proteger ninguém.
- Com mais de 2,1 milhões de mortos em todo o mundo e as vacinas finalmente a chegar, o risco de que se tornassem mais um privilégio dos ricos era real e urgente.
- Países ricos garantiam doses para várias vezes as suas populações enquanto nações pobres não tinham acesso garantido a nenhuma — uma assimetria que a OMS classificou de autodestrutiva.
- Os profissionais de saúde, expostos diariamente ao vírus, continuavam subprotegidos, uma contradição que Ghebreyesus denunciou como intolerável.
- A OMS apelou a que os governos partilhassem os excedentes através do mecanismo Covax, criado precisamente para levar vacinas a quem não as conseguia comprar.
- Mesmo em países organizados como Portugal — onde a vacinação começara a 27 de dezembro — já havia sinais de falhas: pessoas fora dos grupos prioritários tinham sido vacinadas antes do tempo.
- A escolha que Ghebreyesus colocou ao mundo era clara: distribuição equitativa e fim da pandemia, ou acumulação egoísta e circulação indefinida do vírus.
Na manhã de uma sexta-feira de janeiro de 2021, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sentou-se diante das câmaras em Genebra e disse o que muitos preferiam não ouvir: as vacinas contra a COVID-19 corriam o risco de se tornar mais uma ferramenta de desigualdade global. O fenómeno tinha nome — nacionalismo vacinal — e ele não hesitou em classificá-lo de autodestrutivo.
A lógica era implacável. As vacinas eram um recurso finito. Os países ricos garantiam doses para várias vezes as suas populações, enquanto as nações mais pobres esperavam sem garantias. Mas um vírus não respeita fronteiras. Enquanto a pandemia continuasse a circular sem controlo em metade do mundo, nenhum país estaria verdadeiramente seguro. Ghebreyesus enunciava um facto óbvio que, estranhamente, ainda precisava de ser dito.
O seu apelo era concreto: priorizar os profissionais de saúde e os idosos, os mais expostos e os mais vulneráveis. E depois partilhar os excedentes através do Covax, o mecanismo criado pela OMS para redistribuir doses pelos países sem capacidade de as adquirir. Era um teste à capacidade do mundo de agir com algum sentido coletivo.
Havia também uma contradição que ele se sentiu obrigado a nomear: os profissionais de saúde, na linha da frente, expostos ao vírus todos os dias, continuavam frequentemente sem proteção adequada. Isso não deveria ser possível.
Em Portugal, onde a vacinação começara a 27 de dezembro, o processo avançava pelos hospitais, lares e forças de segurança — mas já havia críticas: pessoas fora dos grupos prioritários tinham sido vacinadas. Mesmo nos países mais organizados, o sistema mostrava fissuras.
Ghebreyesus deixou ao mundo uma escolha entre dois futuros: um em que as vacinas aprofundavam a desigualdade e a pandemia nunca terminava verdadeiramente; outro em que doses limitadas eram usadas com estratégia e equidade, salvando vidas em todo o lado. A escolha parecia evidente. Se os governos a fariam era uma questão diferente.
On a Friday morning in late January 2021, the director-general of the World Health Organization sat down before cameras in Geneva to deliver a warning that had grown harder to ignore. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke plainly: the vaccines arriving across the globe risked becoming another tool of inequality, deepening the divide between nations with resources and those without.
The pandemic itself had already exposed fractures in the world that many had preferred not to see. But now, as doses began rolling out, there was a real danger that vaccines would widen those same cracks. Wealthy countries were securing supplies for their populations many times over, while poorer nations waited. This was not accidental. It was the result of what Ghebreyesus called vaccine nationalism—the impulse of governments to hoard doses for their own citizens first, consequences elsewhere be damned. He did not mince words about what this approach actually was: self-destructive. It might achieve short-term political wins at home, he said, but it was ultimately a strategy that would fail.
The math was simple, if brutal. Vaccines were a finite resource. The world had a choice about how to use them. Either nations could distribute them with some regard for equity and need, protecting healthcare workers and the elderly everywhere, or they could watch the pandemic persist indefinitely in the places where it could not be controlled. A virus does not respect borders. A pandemic does not end in one country while raging in another. Ghebreyesus pressed this point with the clarity of someone stating an obvious fact that somehow still needed stating: if vaccination campaigns did not reach the poorest countries, the virus would continue to circulate, mutate, and return.
He had a specific ask for governments. Prioritize the people most at risk—healthcare workers on the front lines, the elderly. And then, crucially, share the surplus. The WHO had established a mechanism called Covax, designed precisely to move excess doses from wealthy nations to those that could not secure their own supplies. It was a test of whether the world could act with any collective sense of purpose.
But there was another problem Ghebreyesus felt compelled to highlight. Healthcare workers—the people literally fighting the pandemic, exposed to the virus constantly—were often inadequately protected. They were overexposed and underprotected at once, a contradiction that should have been impossible to tolerate. They needed vaccines immediately, he said, not as an afterthought once politicians and the wealthy had been covered.
The numbers at that moment told part of the story. Globally, the pandemic had killed more than 2.1 million people across more than 101 million confirmed infections. In Portugal alone, where vaccination had begun just weeks earlier on December 27th, nearly 12,000 had died from almost 700,000 cases. The rollout there had started with healthcare workers in hospitals, then moved to nursing home residents and staff. By the following week, firefighters, military personnel, police officers, and people over 80 would begin receiving shots, along with younger people with serious underlying conditions. But the process had already drawn criticism—people outside priority groups had somehow been vaccinated, a sign that even in relatively wealthy, organized nations, the system was uneven.
Ghebreyesus was essentially asking the world to choose between two futures. One where vaccines became another commodity hoarded by the rich, deepening inequality and ensuring the pandemic never truly ended. Another where limited doses were deployed strategically and equitably, saving lives everywhere and actually bringing the crisis to a close. The choice seemed obvious. Whether governments would make it was another question entirely.
Citações Notáveis
Vaccine nationalism may achieve short-term political goals, but it is a self-destructive approach.— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General
The pandemic will not end unless it ends everywhere in the world.— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
When Ghebreyesus says vaccine nationalism is self-destructive, what does he actually mean? Isn't it rational for a country to protect its own people first?
It sounds rational until you realize the virus doesn't stop at borders. If wealthy nations vaccinate their populations but the virus keeps circulating in poorer countries, it mutates, spreads back, and the whole cycle continues. You've bought yourself temporary safety, not actual safety.
But surely governments have a duty to their own citizens first?
They do. But the duty doesn't end there. Ghebreyesus is saying that duty and global responsibility aren't in conflict here—they're aligned. Protecting your own people actually requires controlling the virus everywhere.
What about the healthcare workers he kept emphasizing?
They're the clearest moral case. These are people who had no choice but to be exposed, day after day. They were taking the risk so others wouldn't have to. Leaving them unvaccinated while politicians got shots was indefensible.
Is Covax actually capable of doing what he's asking?
That's the real question. It's a mechanism, a framework. Whether it works depends entirely on whether wealthy countries actually share doses. Ghebreyesus is essentially asking them to act against their immediate instinct.
And if they don't?
Then the pandemic doesn't end. It just becomes a disease of the poor while the rich move on with their lives.