Pfizer Inc said on Monday its experimental Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 percent effective, a major victory in the fight against a pandemic that has killed more than a million people and infected 50 million.

Drugmakers around the globe have been racing to develop vaccines against Covid-19, but organisations such as the vaccine alliance GAVI have expressed fears that poor nations would lose out in the global race.

Wealthier countries have forged multibillion-dollar supply deals with drugmakers and purchased 3.8 billion doses of potential coronavirus vaccines, leaving few doses available for poor nations, according to a recent analysis by Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center.

Why has access to life-saving vaccines been so unequal and could the coronavirus pandemic lead countries to unite around an affordable vaccine?

Even before Covid-19 hit, access to vaccines was deeply unequal with around 20 million children not receiving vaccines that could save them from serious diseases, death, disability and ill health, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

An estimated 1.4 million children under five died from vaccine-preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and measles in 2016, according to UNICEF.

The situation could be about to get worse because Covid-19-related lockdowns have disrupted the routine immunisation of millions of children against non-coronavirus diseases like diphtheria, measles and polio.

Approximately 80 million children under the age of 1 in at least 68 countries could be impacted, according to WHO.

The cost of vaccinating a child against diphtheria, whooping cough, hepatitis B, tetanus, pneumonia, polio, rotavirus, was $15.90 in 2018, according to GAVI.

While this may not seem much, this is still beyond the reach of many poor households.

Read the full article about vaccine accessibility from Thomson Reuters Foundation at Eco-Business.