"We expect the first contingent of vaccines by Monday," said Fadil Novalić, Prime Minister of the Federation of B&H ... on March 17th, 2021. Today is Monday, May 17th, 2021. Two months have passed by. As you know, Novalić did not procured the vaccines, and it is not yet known when he will.
But it’s not that he lacked in making promises. On March 17th, he announced that as many as 500,000 Russian vaccines would come FB&H on Monday. When it turned out that the Russian vaccines will not arrive, on March 30th, Novalić finally admitted that he did not know how to do his job, so he cried out in front of the FB&H Parliament to suggest how to get the vaccines. In mid-April, Novalić wrote letters of intent, as many as four of them about the procurement of vaccines. That didn't help much either. However, on April 29th, Novalić finally came with good news, announcing that he was procuring 500,000 vaccines again, this time from China. Of course, these vaccines did not arrive either.
These figures would be even worse if at least there were no alms from different parts of the world and donated vaccines for our country. Although the total number of vaccines that arrived in B&H is shamefully small and insufficient for mass vaccination of the population, even in that respect, the Federation of B&H led by Fadil Novalić is significantly worse than the Republic of Srpska. According to the FB&H Ministry of Health, 148,400 doses of coronavirus vaccine have arrived in the entity so far, including 10,000 AstraZeneca vaccines donated exclusively from Serbia to Sarajevo Canton. For Sinofarm vaccines donated to Bosnia and Herzegovina by China, for the FB&H, out of a total of 50,000, 30,360 doses were allocated. Other types of Chinese vaccine, Sinovac, FB&H has 28,380 doses, and these are donations from Turkey for the citizens of this entity. The largest number of vaccines that FB&H has is Pfizer vaccines (52,560) when we count 31,500 that recently arrived exclusively for this entity through the EU and COVAX mechanism. Earlier, 21,060 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine came from the same sources. There are currently 37,100 of them in the Federation of B&H, of which 10,000 doses are donations from Serbia to the FB&H, and these are the first vaccines that have arrived for this entity.
So far, a total of 250,490 doses of coronavirus vaccines have arrived in Republic of Srpska. This entity has the biggest number of Chinese Sinofarm vaccines (98,600) and part of it was procured independently, and the other part is a donation from China to B&H, 74,000 doses of Sputnik procured directly, 47,970 doses of Pfizer vaccine that arrived through the EU and COVAX mechanism, and through the same mechanisms, they received 18,600 doses of AstraZeneac vaccine, with one part being donated by Serbia.
A cursory glance at these data shows that, although all levels of government have failed catastrophically in the procurement of vaccines, even the RS authorities have been far more successful in the direct procurement of vaccines than the FB&H government led by Bakir's Fadil.
And while citizens give 42% of their salary to the state every month through taxes and contributions, while they give an additional 17% to VAT on everything they buy and while excise taxes are constantly raised, on the other hand for the tax money they take from them, this kind of government they lead the SDA and personnel like Novalić are not able to provide the citizens with even the most basic protection of life and health.
And while Novalić deceived the public with false promises and the announcement of vaccines that never came,during that time the real problem was the death of citizens. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 9,000 people died as a result of coronavirus infection in one year. On average, B&H ranks third in the world in the number of deaths from coronavirus effects. This figure could certainly have been much lower if the vaccination process had taken place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the poor equipment of hospitals that were unwilling to deal with this honor should not be forgotten.
