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Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson has scolded rich nations for practising what he described as "COVID apartheid" to the detriment of developing countries and called for urgent additional financing from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to build adequate capacity for quick and widespread vaccination programmes. "There can be no excuse for hoarding excessive [vaccine] supplies and then giving them away shortly before the expiry dates so that they have eventually to be dumped," Patterson said in the opening address to the 26th Caribbean Multinational Business Conference held virtually November 12 and 13."We are suffering from COVID apartheid," Patterson insisted. "The vaccine level in high-income countries is close to 70 per cent, while sub-Saharan Africa falls below five per cent. Even despite the more recent efforts of the European Union, Canada, the USA, and UK, we still fall short of 1.6 billion additional doses to build global herd immunity."He argued that where poverty exists, human vulnerability will increase, "and the forecasts indicate that the world will lose US$5.3 trillion if vaccination programmes are non-existent or ineffective in low-income countries".The former prime minister, who is now and statesman in residence of the PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy, pointed to an IMF forecast that "low percentages of vaccines in least developed countries will make the whole world more vulnerable to repeated waves of COVID-19".Mankind, he said, is today being confronted by three pandemics - COVID-19, climate change, and racism.Referencing the global conference on climate change just ended in Glasgow, Scotland, Patterson said, "The future of our world hangs on what is decided in Glasgow. For us in the Caribbean, any increase of rising temperature beyond 1.6 degrees Celsius makes us the bacon that goes with the egg."He described as a "good omen", the fact that at the climate change conference in Glasgow the two largest polluters - China and the United States - had announced their intentions, notwithstanding their ideological hostilities and rivalry in the competition for global supremacy, to work together on the abolition of coal as a source of contaminated energy."Let's hope it will be a permanent star in the environmental firmament and not just an illusionary meteor," said Patterson.On the issue of racism, Patterson said, "There are those of our ancestry who have done well - excelled professionally and even enjoyed prosperity - but for far too many people of African descent throughout the Americas, the intractable racism pandemic manifests itself in abject poverty, absolute despair, hunger, the lack of water, poor education, squatting, inadequate public health access, [and] higher infant mortality rates."He said the cancer of racism has never been more hydra-headed than it appears today and referenced is address to the conference last year in which he spoke about the "historic significance of the assassination of George Floyd".Floyd was a 46-year-old black American who was killed by white police officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes while he was pinned to the ground in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.His death sparked worldwide protests against police brutality and racism.In April 2020, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. The following month he was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, the two police officers who assisted Chauvin in restraining Floyd, are to face the court in March next year on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder.Patterson, in his address last week, said Floyd's murder may have marked a decisive turning point."It has made the racists bolder and more defiant. How else can we explain the obnoxious legislation which is being rushed through several southern states that would in fact deprive democracy of its most fundamental tenet, so aptly described by Abraham Lincoln as 'Government of the people, for the people, by the people'? Are persons of colour no longer people? Is this Confederacy all over again in the 21st century?" the veteran Caribbean leader asked.He further questioned whether this is why Haitian migrants - whose martyrs Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and Henri Christophe lit the flame for freedom from slavery and imperial domination - are treated "worse than animals" on the US border as they seek to escape the poverty and exploitation by French and American perversion over the years.Patterson identified imperialism and slavery as the "two companions of evil", which have left their indelible mark, essentially dividing the world between rich and poor, by a gulf which is getting wider and wider daily."The time has come," he said, "for the leaders of Africa and the Caribbean with the full participation of our scholars and civil society to bury the fable which the Europeans have spun, that Africa is equally to blame for the pernicious slave trade. The European beneficiaries have concealed their part in capturing by force, stealth, and the overthrow of tribal leaders who resisted."He insisted that Africa suffered tremendous losses as entire generations of men and women who were vital for a variety of roles in the development of vast areas on the continent were stolen from Africa.