17 days ago, the Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), Fadil Novalic, triumphantly announced that a contract would be signed with Pfizer in 15 days for the procurement of as many as one million doses of coronavirus vaccines. As many times before, it turned out that the first man of the Federal Government was not telling the truth.
Novalic announced a large procurement on June 4th in Zenica, on the day when he placed the now famous statement that the authorities in FBiH “did not run to be guinea pigs in mass vaccination like Israel, Serbia, Hungary…”
It is important to mention that even then, Novalic announced the signing of the contract without any well-founded arguments, considering that only one informative meeting with Pfizer representatives had been held until that moment, at which “it was agreed that an agreement would be discussed”.
However, 17 days later, Pfizer vaccines are not even mentioned, and it is known that vaccination has been discontinued across the entity because there is also a lack of other vaccines arriving through COVAX and the mechanism of the European Union (EU).
So, for the umpteenth time in the first six months of this year, Novalic announced the arrival of vaccines and presented everything as a job that was well done, and in the end, there was no great outcome. It is already the second half of June, and the FBiH has not been able to buy a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine on its own.
But, although the purchase of Pfizer was on a long stick (at least 15 days), the purchase of 500.000 doses of Sinopharma seemed much more realistic, but there was obviously a problem with that process as well.
First, Fadil Novalic stated on June 10th that a contract had been signed with the Chinese and that the job was completed since the People’s Republic of China approved the import of half a million vaccines.
Only eight days later acting director of the Public Health Institute of FBiH, Sinisa Skocibusic, told that the procurement has not been agreed yet, considering that the signature of the Chinese side is awaited. It should be noted that in the days between that, federal officials claimed that the Chinese were the first to sign and that after they sent the contract by diplomatic mail to the FBiH Government for signature.
At the end of May, the FBiH Government also announced the purchase of Sputnik, but so far it has not been realized. Due to all the above, BiH citizens have no choice but to cross the eastern border and get immunized in Serbian cities completely free of charge, Klix.ba writes.
E.DZ.
