As “profil” reports in its current issue, Bosnia-Herzegovina had to throw away corona vaccination doses that had been donated by Austria. Austria donated around half a million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Bosnia on August 10th. The Bosnia donation was – after Iran – the second largest donation to a single country that Austria has made so far.
“We had to dispose of part of it,” says Dušan Kojić, spokesman for the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Ministry of Civil Affairs (responsible for health). AstraZeneca vaccines last for six months. The cans donated from Austria expired in October and November. The Bosnian authorities therefore only had a few weeks to transport the vaccine to doctors’ offices and hospitals and administer them there. There wasn’t enough time. For the Austrian taxpayer, the damage is limited anyway, because AstraZeneca is no longer inoculated in this country. In other words: sooner or later they would have been disposed of anyway.
How many doses ended up in the trash, spokesman Kojić cannot quantify: It is not collected, “because we did not only get AstraZeneca vaccination doses from Austria”. When counting discarded cans, do not separate according to donor country.
Experts in health policy and development aid have long criticized the mode of international vaccine donations from rich to poor countries around the world. These often flow haphazardly and uncoordinated. The German Ministry of Health warned in October that due to bureaucratic, logistical and legal problems there was a risk of “having to throw away large amounts of valuable vaccines”.
