After its request to the United States, Bangladesh has urged the United Kingdom (UK) to help it by providing vaccine doses to meet its emergency needs as the second dose vaccination is disrupted in Bangladesh.

Speaking to ITV News, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said described the vaccine situation in Bangladesh as a “crisis”. 

Dr Momen said his message to the UK government is that they should be more sincere. “They should help their Commonwealth member states.”

Bangladesh entered into a deal with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to purchase 30 million doses of a potential vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca for Covid-19.

Bangladesh was supposed to get five million doses of the vaccine per month as the SII and Bangladesh’s Beximco Pharma signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for priority delivery of the vaccine doses.

Bangladesh sought at least 3 million doses of the vaccine under the agreement to address the immediate demand in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has so far received only 7 million of Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine doses produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) through its contract. Bangladesh also received 3.3 million doses of the vaccine as a bilateral partnership gift.

He told ITV News that the Bangladeshi government has appealed directly to the UK government for these required doses, but the request was ultimately rejected on the grounds that the UK government did not have the capacity.