Covid-19: Is India Subject to Double Standards?

While horror images come from India, the United States, Britain and other countries are rushing emergency aid to the world’s second most populated country.

RELATED:

India Reaches 18 Million COVID-19 Cases

"We're sending out an emergency shipment of over 600 items of equipment. We want to provide them all the support because they're close friends, increasingly important partners, but also we need this kind of international collaboration if we're going to get through the pandemic, we're not going to be safe until we're all safe," Dominic Raab
UK Foreign Secretary, said.

In Delhi, Mohit Tiwari, relative of victim, said: "The hospital ran out of oxygen, they did not even inform the family of the shortage beforehand, and they called just to say please come urgently and when we came here the person was already dead."

What’s behind all this, is a double standard, according to Achal Prabhala, a Public health activist.

"I have to say that there's something disingenuous, I think, about the UK government's response to the Indian crisis, because just up to this point, the United Kingdom asked for 10 million doses of vaccines that were being made in India that were exclusively meant for poor countries who had no choice", he said.

"The United Kingdom is also blocking a waiver of pharmaceutical monopolies at the World Trade Organization that South Africa and India have proposed. That is, again, a travesty. And finally, the United Kingdom has leverage over companies like Pfizer and Moderna and AstraZeneca, who it funds, it sends large amounts of money to. It should exert its legal, financial and moral pressure", Tiwair said.