Cardinal Turkson and Global Faith Leaders Call for Fair Access to COVID-19 Vaccines

In a new international declaration, global faith leaders and senior health and humanitarian figures are calling on countries to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, warning that the world is “at a turning point." Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Human Integral Development, is a key signatory of the declaration.

“In the current pandemic experience we discover that we are brothers and sisters,” Cardinal Turkson said on World Health Day in April 2021, adding that "in true fraternity, individualism and selfishness can be defeated by the reaffirmation that only the search for the good of all can lead to good for me.”

"[The pandemic] has taught us that health is a common good so that by protecting one's own health, the health of the other and of the entire community are protected as well," Cardinal Turkson said.

"We need to build a world where each community, regardless of where they live, or who they are, has urgent access to vaccinations: not just for COVID-19, but also for the many other diseases that continue to harm and kill," the declaration reads. "As the pandemic has shown us, in our interdependent world no one is safe until everyone is safe. We have a choice: vaccine nationalism or human solidarity."

The declaration concludes, “It is time for decisive leadership. Countries and organisations across the world have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address global inequality and reverse some of the fallout from the past year. In doing so, they will bring hope not only for the poorest in the world, but for us all.”

Click here to read the full declaration.