Start with the World and Continue in Isolation

Abstract

This chapter seeks to evaluate the Pasteur and Razi Institutes' vaccine legacy in Iran. At the time of writing, this chapter (mid-April 2021), less than 30% of frontline healthcare personnel, has been administered with a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, which is a considerable gap in the implementation of the plan. Dr. Alireza Biglari, Head of the Pasteur Institute, in his announcement of the successful testing of the Iran-Cuba vaccine, emphasized that ‘COVID showed us that we can in no circumstances depend on foreign help… in such global shortage, no one will provide us with the needed vaccine… so let's support our scientists… vaccine is a matter of sovereignty and is linked to the country's biosecurity… as much as it is worth spending on defense system, it is worth spending on vaccine’. The Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also stated that ‘Just as we were forced to manufacture missiles ourselves, we produced a coronavirus vaccine’. © 2022 Taylor and Francis.