UK Envoy: No Philippine nurses for vaccine deal

The United Kingdom has no plan to enter into a deal that will allow the Philippine government to send healthcare workers to Britain in exchange for coronavirus vaccines, UK's top diplomat to Manila said Wednesday.

“I’d say we’ve got no plans to link vaccines with those conversations around the recruitment of nurses,” UK Ambassador Daniel Pruce said in a virtual chat with reporters.

Without providing specific details, Pruce confirmed meeting with Labor Secretary Silverstre Bello IIII on the Philippine proposal a few weeks ago, but said the UK prefers to assist developing nation’s access to COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility.

“As you know, the UK has made a very emphatic commitment with any surplus vaccines it may have…will be passed on to the WHO COVAX facility and it will be thru the COVAX facility that distribution of surplus vaccines to developing countries will be managed in a fair and equitable way,” Pruce said.

It was also earlier reported by Reuters that Britain’s Health Ministry was not interested in entering into such agreement.

“We have no plans for the UK to agree a vaccine deal with the Philippines linked to further recruitment of nurses,” a health ministry spokeswoman said, citing Prime Minister Boris Johnson's pledge to share spare shots later in the year.

“We have confirmed that we will share any surplus vaccines in the future — for example through the COVAX international procurement pool.”

Early this month, Pruce announced that the Philippines was included in the first-round list of countries who will receive free COVAX vaccine allocations of 10 million doses, mostly from Oxford-AstraZeneca developed in the UK.

The Philippines, which has one of the highest COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia, has yet to rollout its vaccination program.

COVAX, Pruce stressed, “is the best mechanism to assure equitable access to vaccines globally.”

A major funder of COVAX, the British government has contributed £548 million pounds to support the facility and its activities.

“We’re doing that because we are very emphatically committed to ensure that the vaccines as they become available are distributed in a fair and equitable basis,” he said.

The UK is a top deployment destination of Filipino nurses in the world and Pruce lauded their professionalism, competence and significant contributions to Britain's healthcare system, particularly during the pandemic.

“They bring enormous compassion and empathy and caring for patients they look after. We consider ourselves blessed,” he said.  — RSJ, GMA News