Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity plans to acquire one million doses of the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine which should be available to the public by the year's end, said the head of RS representative office in Russia, Dusko Perovic, on Wednesday.
Unofficially, he said, he was informed that the vaccine was developed in a way so that it prologues the immunity to Covid-19 of the person who takes it.
“We’re waiting to see the results how long the immunity will last, a year, two or even more,” Perovic told Glas Srpske daily.
Following the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, the country was subdivided into two semi-autonomous entities, the RS and the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation (FBiH). This left the central government weak, and each entity decides its own matters such as health-care, security, and other internal issues. The country’s foreign policy is in charge of the tripartite presidency consisting of representatives of each of the three constituent peoples.
The RS representative said he sent inquiries on the RS’ behalf to three vaccine producers and one of those addresses belongs to the company that said they developed the vaccine.
After the breakout of the pandemic, the two entities had a loosely coordinated response to it, with some joint measures aimed at preventing the spread of the disease. When news arrived that Russia developed its own vaccine, the RS entity immediately said they would purchase it, while the FBiH remained firm that they would wait for the Western vaccine, either from the US or one of the European countries.
Commenting on the negative comments from the FBiH regarding the Russian vaccine, Perovic said he could not comment “such an irrational policy” and that “he doesn’t know why the comments are negative if someone has a good product, especially if its beneficial for one’s health.”
in his opinion, the people spreading negative comments “are lobbying and ‘screaming’ against Russian medicines which are 30 percent cheaper from the Western ones and which are maybe even better than those produced in the West.”
