Most of the northern hemisphere are eagerly awaiting their chance to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The speed at which governments, big pharma and research institutions around the world have combined to produce a vaccine has been unprecedented and impressive. And those countries that have paid the most will get it first, so rich first and poor last.

At the time of writing there have been 68,266,810 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,557,674 have died (from or with the virus) and both those number are likely higher than what we know. Those are big numbers and it’s right that it has been taken seriously. But it also illustrates that this world operates in favour of the rich and rich countries are by and large concerned only for themselves. And Christians are not much better, we are just as self-interested.

Consider malaria. In 2019 there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria and 409,000 people died. Now you might say, look more people have died with/from COVID-19 except people have been dying from malaria for decades. In 2005 the number was over 900,000. So every year for the past 20 years (and much, much longer than that) somewhere between a 400,000 and a million people have died every year.

I can’t remember my church family ever calling for prayer and fasting for the development of a malaria vaccine. We had people refused permission to travel to Sweden because of COVID-19 yet not once have they refused permission to travel to Africa. I can’t remember governments banning travel, shutting schools, closing churches, calling for national days of prayers or invested all their resources into the development of a life-saving vaccine.

And the only reason I can think of as to why that might be is that the people dying of malaria are not in Europe or America but in Africa. One child under five dies every two minutes from malaria. Think of what we would have done if those children had been British or American instead of from Mali or Congo.

And the only word I can think of to describe that is injustice.

I understand that transmission is different which is why COVID-19 has gone global but malaria is mostly confined (although a warming world may well change that) but as Tim Keller in his devotional book on Proverbs writes that doesn’t excuse us.

The world is God’s, and if he has given you more of it to steward than someone else, that does not mean it belongs wholly to you. Like any steward, you must use the true owner’s wealth as he wishes it to be used. God loves everything he has made (Psalm 145:9) and especially those who “fall and … are bowed down” (Psalm 145:14). To quote Basil the Great (AD 329–79), “The bread which you keep belongs to the hungry; the coats in your closet, to the naked; those shoes … to the shoeless; the gold you have hidden … to the needy. Therefore, as often as you were able to help others, and refused, so often did you do them wrong.”

Keller, Timothy. The Way of Wisdom: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs (US title: God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life) . John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.

Fortunately just as there is hope for an effective vaccine in the north there is hope for a vaccine in the south for malaria although no speed trials there – maybe 2024, not 2021. This is shameful given it was approved for trials in 2015 and pilot projects in 2019. Yet they have to wait another 5 years by which time another 2 million people will have died from the disease.

COVID-19 has indeed been a painful and difficult disease for many and it has exposed more of our idols than we might think.