Team:Crete/Sustainable


Creating a sustainable future one vaccine at a time!

Overview

Our project of an edible vaccine is not limited to the competition but meets the needs of a modern society for sustainable development. To achieve this goal we had to conduct our own research but also cooperate with AIESEC in order for them to share with us their take on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). AIESEC is the world's largest youth organization that deals with youth exchanges all around the world and has been operating under the auspices of the UN since 2015 according to the 17 SDGs. For the purpose of this collaboration we contacted the local Committee of Crete which thoroughly guided and worked with us in regards to the actions we had to take to meet the criteria for the goals we chose to tackle. The goals that felt closer to our project as well as more achievable by our members were Goals 3,10 and 17 that are presented in detail below:
GOAL 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
As the name implies, this goal aims for universal health coverage, a part of the SDSs that our project is cut out for! What our edible vaccine does is give access to a safe, effective and innovative weapon against SARS-CoV-2. First of all, edible vaccines tend to have less side effects than conventional vaccines and that is due to the minimized or in some cases zeroed addition of adjuvants. Moreover the attenuated virus is not employed. Same goes for chemicals, of which the concentration is substantially lower than the ones in existing vaccines. As a result our edible vaccine is safer and has much less potential of being allergenic. Most importantly on an epidemiological level, we believe that our project can help eventually end this and future pandemics or epidemics since edible vaccines are easily produced and customised in an extremely short span. Moreover it can help prevent future epidemics not only in people but also in livestock. Given the daily issues of developing communities, this can be a lifesaver as many communities such as the ones highly dependent on livestock to make ends meet.
GOAL 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
The development of multi-stakeholder partnerships to exchange information, experience, technology, and financial resources is considered as crucial to the SDGs' overall achievement. The objective is to improve north–south and south–south collaboration, with public–private partnerships including civil society being emphasized particularly.
In a way, through our proposed implementation when it comes to the vaccination method and the end users, our team not only follows the Triangular Cooperation Model but expands upon it since a successful implementation of this part of our project requires the successful cooperation of many developed and developing countries while constantly aided and supported by private initiatives. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 31 August 2018 only a handful of countries meet the criteria set when it comes to such kinds of alliances or partnerships of a kindred spirit. We believe that our idea may easily serve as a platform upon which any country or individual can expand upon setting an important paradigm of the feasibility of world-scale cooperation projects.
GOAL 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
The unequal distribution of vaccines could be considered one of the most urgent problems in this time and age. It is a common secret that developing countries have always had extremely limited access to vaccines against any disease let alone SARS-CoV-2. Most of the time they had to solely rely on foreign help. The troubling aspect of this solution is that it only partially and momentarily solves the problem and doesn’t actually give the chance to such countries establish a permanent line of connection with the private or public institution that could take care of such problems in the long run. This distinction was one of the main reasons for choosing this project, an edible vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. This edible vaccine does not require special storage conditions, thus minimizing the costs of storage and distribution in the developing countries. In addition, due to its nature, it does not require specialized personnel (doctors,nurses), specialized and expensive lab facilities or a high-end health care center for vaccine administration. As we have already established, any new kind of vaccine or other kind of solution to any kind of epidemic or pandemic can be, by default, only of a momentary nature...up until now. Because as a team we do not only seek to ameliorate the current unequal distribution but also offer a substantial alternative to countries without the appropriate infrastructure or access to health related research institutions to solve their problem once and for all. The perks of an edible vaccine, if expanded and experimented upon, can offer not only a permanent solution to these developing countries but also rejuvenate the national economy by not having to heavily rely on outsourcing funds for health related purposes thus also improving the current Gini index for such countries. It is important to underline that the latter is in dire need of fixing since according to estimates of the International Monetary Fund, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the average of this index for emerging market and developing economies by more than 6 per cent.

Sources

  • United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Sustainable Development
  • The roles of livestock in developing countries 2013(M. Herrero, D. Grace, J. Njuki, N. Johnson, D. Enahoro, S. Silvestri, M.C. Rufino), 20
  • United Nations Economic and Social Council (2020) Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals Report of the Secretary-General
  • The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development (GSDR 2019) by UNDESA, 2019
  • "Eerste 'tracker' die progressie op SDG's per land volgt (Fondsnieuws, 30 December 2020)