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When the COVID-19 pandemic first took the world by storm, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a Solidarity Call to Action to realize equitable global access to COVID-19 health technologies through pooling of knowledge, intellectual property and data. At the dawn of 2022, 70% of rich countries' populations were vaccinated but only 4.6% of poor countries (Our World In Data, Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations, 2022). Vaccine nationalism and rampant self-interest grew and our ineffective global response led to new variants of concern - like Omicron - emerging. Rather than abandon the idea of solidarity in global health, we believe that the international community must embrace it. Solidarity, with its emphasis on relationality and recognition of similarities, could offer fertile ground for building an ethical framework for an interconnected and interdependent world. Such a framework would be better than a framework that focuses principally on individual entitlements. To defend this view, we draw on African relational views of personhood and morality. When humans are conceived of as essentially relational beings, solidarity occupies a central role in moral behaviour. We argue that part of the reason appeals to solidarity have failed may be traced to an inadequate conceptualization of solidarity. For as long as solidarity remains a beautiful notion, practiced voluntarily by generous and kindhearted persons, in a transient manner to respond to specific challenges, it will never be able to offer an adequate framework for addressing inequities in global health in a systematic and permanent way. Drawing on this understanding of solidarity, we propose pathways to respond creatively to the risks we face to ensure equitable access to essential health for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the question, 'What do we owe each other as members of a global community during a global health crisis?' In tandem, it has raised underlying concerns about how we should prepare for the next infectious disease outbreak and what we owe to people in other countries during normal times. While the prevailing bioethics literature addresses these questions drawing on values and concepts prominent in the global north, this paper articulates responses prominent in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper first introduces a figurative 'global health village' to orient readers to African traditional thought. Next, it considers ethical requirements for governing a global health village, drawing on the ethic of ubuntu to formulate African renderings of solidarity, relational justice and sufficiency. The final section of the paper uses these values to critique current approaches, including COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator, and a proposed international Pandemic Treaty. It proposes a path forward that better realizes ubuntu in global health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets forth a solidaristic approach to global distribution of vaccines against the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus. Our approach draws inspiration from African ethics and from the characterization of the Covid‐19 crisis as a syndemic, a convergence of biosocial forces that interact with one another to produce and exacerbate clinical disease and prognosis. The first section elaborates the twin ideas of syndemic and solidarity. The second section argues that these ideas lend support to global health alliances to distribute vaccines beyond national borders. The third section introduces ethical criteria to guide global distribution, emphasizing priority to low‐ and middle‐income countries, which have the least ability to obtain vaccines on their own. It also justifies giving priority to people at high risk of infection and high risk of severe disease and death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]