For Some of Us There Will be No ‘Post-Vaccine Return to Society’

There can’t be when you don’t have access to the vaccine in the first place

Dr. Furaha Asani
7 min readOct 2, 2021
Image from Markus Spiske on Pexels

I rejoiced when news of possible Covid-19 vaccine candidates hit in 2020. I hoped that a strategic roll-out in these ‘unprecedented times’ would mean that vaccine uptake would be high, and that the urgency of the pandemic would lead to knowledge and resources being shared amongst different nations. I am no influencer by any stretch, but I committed my knowledge in immunology — together with my speaking and writing skills — to do as much demystification work around vaccines that I could in my tiny corner of the internet.

Vaccines as a Seed of Hope in Healthcare

Of course, evidence shows us time and again that vaccines save lives. And it is intuitive to want to see a collective healing (both physical and otherwise) amidst the global upheaval and devastation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, my eagerness to see the vaccination uptake statistics steadily increase was born out of more than just typical goodwill for global health: at the time I truly wasn’t sure if I, like many other precarious migrants in the UK, had legal access to the vaccine. I was embroiled in a court case fighting against deportation from the UK, with no…

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Dr. Furaha Asani

Migrant. Postdoctoral researcher. Teacher. Mental Health Advocate. Writer. Professional in the streets, loud on the sheets of paper.