Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet received the money it paid for 899,360 vaccines against COVID-19, out of a total of 1,232,000 doses ordered through the COVAX mechanism in November 2020, which were not delivered to our country. Director of the Institute for Public Health of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Siniša Skočibušić, said in the BHT1 Uživo program that BiH did not receive the vaccines, but neither did receive the money, and that the case will go to court.
“It is important that we do not lose the concept in our heads as it was at the beginning. So, it is the year 2020, there is a new disease, a pandemic, the so-called vaccine nationalism has appeared. The countries that invented and made the vaccine, control it and do not sell it to anyone. The world mechanism, through the World Health Organization, says – pay and we will deliver the vaccines to you and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina does it. In the end it happened that we received very few vaccines, and now when we ask them to return the money, they do not want to return it to us in its entirety, they retain a certain part,” said Skočibušić.
According to Skočibušić, their explanation for this is that these are costs incurred as a result of the vaccine order.
He emphasizes that this is a serious problem, which is why the BiH delegation went to Geneva for talks.
“Unfortunately, the conditions that were fixed at that time are quite strict. I think that the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina has made a decision on how to conduct negotiations on the return, that is, the judicial resolution of this dispute. Unfortunately, it could take a long time and I am not sure what kind of financial repercussions it has, but it actually tells us how important it is to have a strong system and how important it is to be strong in the social community,” said Skočibušić.
He explains how the procedures in 2020 looked different.
“First of all, it was said that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina would receive 800,000 doses, and we received 212,000. This could not have been predicted at the time. I must also say that no producer in Bosnia and Herzegovina wanted to sell the vaccine at that time. That was a completely different situation. . And, the opportunity was also a certain guarantee that we had through the relevant international institutions – take it or leave it. At that moment we hoped to get vaccines, money was not a problem for us then. Now we saw that they did not give us vaccines, and they will not return the money,” said Skočibušić.
