“Albanians deserve vaccine standards as well as Germans, French, Italians in compliance with EU standards. Rama can not treat Albanians differently, making electoral “shows” to hide his failure to provide vaccines certified by the EMA, FDA or the British Agency!” has said a senior official of the opposition Democratic Party (DP).
Tritan Shehu, a former DP lawmaker, made that comment as Prime Minister Edi Rama arrived from Istanbul where the Albanian government signed on Thursday a deal with Turkish company Keymen Ilaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. to be provided with 1 million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
Rama also announced upon his arrival in Tirana that it was agreed on a project with the Turkish pharmaceutical company, which makes the distribution of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, to build a factory for the production of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.
But DP’s Shehu, a former health minister, said Rama’s ‘game’ of bringing Russian vaccines from the UAE, Chinese ones from Turkey, or even those 970 doses of “Pfizer” without origin, is currently twice as dangerous, because it opens even more destructive precedents for Albanian pharmaceutical system in perspective.
“Russian and Chinese vaccines have not yet been certified by those agencies that guarantee pharmacological safety in the EU and the world. No one today can guarantee them,” said Shehu.
DP leadership has strongly criticized Rama for handling the vaccination of the people but has never given any details how it will secure vaccines if it comes to power after the April 25 elections in Albania where the official electoral campaign was launched on Thursday.
The behavior and use of those vaccines for administration in Albania is an extreme irresponsibility of Rama while their certification should have waited, said the DP senior official. /argumentum.al
