What's keeping the world from getting vaccinated against COVID-19?
Begging for vaccines in Caracas with no idea of who is listening. Family members collecting the dead themselves with no idea of who's actually counting those lost. Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Julio Castro says his fellow Venezuelans feel alone now. Unable to trust either the numbers or the plan. So we are doing a kind of unofficial surveillance system which taking count 20-40 of the bigger hospital in Venezuela and the numbers are quite different from the from the official numbers. [Reporter] Help is not coming fast. Venezuela rejected offers of AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX. It may get some mRNA vaccines from the group in July. The United States has excluded Venezuela from its vaccination donations for now. citing a lack of transparency about how the country has handled COVID. And deals made with Russian and Chinese firms haven't seen promised deliveries arrive in sufficient numbers. The black market though is surging for those with means. Paying up to hundreds of dollars for a shot. This is irregular. This is unethical. And this is dangerous for people. [Reporter] And Dr. Castro worries the once-wealthy nation is now so mismanaged it has no resilience to handle either the illness or more economic collapse. Humanitarian crisis is the worst-case scenario for Venezuela and we are in the middle of that. Doctors leaving the country. [Reporter] This is where COVID's global complications get uglier. For the first year of the pandemic it was a problem for wealthier countries. Perhaps because they tend to have older populations. But something happened a few weeks ago in May. On a single day, the pandemic flipped. With vaccines available for the rich the death rates in higher and middle-income countries dropped below those in lower-income countries for the very first time. The poorest nations with the youngest populations and the weakest infrastructure now see the most death and illness. COVID has officially turned its sights on the global poor. Mark that day on the calendar as the one Achal Prabhala in Bangalore, India really started to panic. And I find that this is more terrifying in a way because what it means is when poor countries are left to themselves for a disease that primarily affects them it will mean that they will be worse off and have less resources to deal with that. [Reporter] He's a global campaigner for access to medicine and says as wealthy countries see their dangers diminish and plan reopening they forget the promise of we're all in this together. India didn't see huge loss until a few months ago. Now nearly 350,000 are dead and the health-care system is in crisis. The day our cameras were there Prabhala was supposed to get his second shot but the clinic ran out. And there's the enormous ironic problem. The country that's the world's largest vaccine manufacturer is short on vaccines. Barely three per cent of its 1.3 billion people have been inoculated. Why do we have a vaccine shortage? The Indian government did really nothing to prepare itself for the pandemic. When the first phase of the pandemic passed they invested nothing for the bulk of the year of the pandemic in any vaccine development efforts in this country. [Reporter] India's Serum Institute did have COVAX contracts to supply 92 of the world's poorest countries with vaccines. Enough for 4 billion people relying on that help. Deliveries were slow at first then once the virus started wreaking havoc in India delivery stopped totally. And given that these vaccines were being made in our borders the government had the authority to restrict those exports. Countries that are waiting for vaccines from India. Vaccines that are now not coming. What are they going to do? Well, they have decided that they cannot rely on the COVAX facility which is what promised them these vaccines. So it's failed dismally and so what they did is to prepare themselves by buying vaccines on their own. One of the problems is that any any country that woke up late to understanding that it needs a large supply of vaccines is now at the back of the queue. [Reporter] Some of those countries now trying to make deals for vaccines really don't have the means to pay for them. Like Nigeria. Of its 200 million people less than one per cent are vaccinated. It has among the fewest doctors per capita in the developing world. And so little testing, it looks like there's very little COVID but the virus shows its cruelties. Nafisat Adamu used to work in a bank but lost her job. So did a third of the country. Global COVID lockdowns and low oil prices demolishing the economy. I don't need, I don't get help from any government. I don't need, I don't get help from anybody. I am on my own. [Reporter] No jobs and a creeping sense of feeling unsafe. Surging violence in Nigeria a side effect of being an unvaccinated and fragile country. There cannot be more kidnapping, more robbery more killing, more bandit more Boko issues, a lot of things. The only trigger that we know right now that has led to this is this is gross economic you know recession that we've experienced. So the sooner we get this pandemic over the better for the whole world. [Reporter] Edwin Ikhouria is the Africa director for the One Campaign a global effort to end poverty. As shocked as he is by what's happening in Nigeria he is baffled by this country. Look at the number of vaccines per capita each nation has secured. The one that secured more doses per person than any other country in the world is Canada. And it is already vaccinating children. From the outside, this looks dangerously selfish. It may be great for the political landscape but while you're vaccinating children over the age of 12 just remember that health workers in some low-income country who are also facing this virus every day do not have access to a vaccine. Remember that as long as these virus remains with them remains in those places it continues to mutate it will come back to your own population in the long run and then every effort you've made before will be wasted. [Reporter] And if the medical humanitarian argument does not inspire sharing vaccines immediately maybe an economic one will. Once the virus is ravaging in other places of the earth everything that Canada needs from those places or that supposed to be selling to those places will not be there, right. [Reporter] The bulk of the world always feared they'd be left behind and now they see it happening. See politics at play, not co-operation. At the very moment, sharing matters most.