Link to Article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/guatemala-discontent-grows-over-covid-vaccine-rollout-corruption
Guatemala has had a hard time coming up with a good system of distributing their Covid-19 vaccines. Driving growing discontent over vaccine access, pandemic management and alleged corruption issues are all issues the Guatemala has faced. Now, the main issue is that the vaccines that Guatemala gets are expiring before they are used. “It is a management crisis,” Chavez told Al Jazeera. “The problem here is that when there were no vaccines, [the government] did not prepare cold storage, vaccine centres, or personnel.” “Unfortunately, due to impunity and corruption in our country, we are not heard and we have to head into the streets,” Noemi Gonzalez, a nurse and community health union leader told Al Jazeera. “Resources do not reach us. We do not have protective equipment. We do not have medications to treat the population.”
This actually makes me sad. The fact that the corruption of a government is getting in the way of their peoples health just does not sit right with me. And Guatemala has obviously had problems with their health care system based on the article so this is an issue that has been around for awhile and nothing is getting fixed. So I understand the Guatemalan peoples anger, they feel like their country does not care about them and they are probably right. I hope that the protests go well for them but the country is so corrupt it probably won’t.
Other countries have already involved themselves with helping with Guatemala because they have helped them get vaccines but no one has seemed to care about how the doses are just getting wasted. I feel like this is an issue that other countries should try to come in and solve because it’s going to take every country getting their people vaccinated to get the world back to normal. So I am kinda surprised that no one has tried to step in to help Guatemala get their vaccination process together but maybe another country getting involved will create other issues. I also know Guatemala is not the only country that is having issues with vaccine distribution.