Does donor country impact the efficacy of health aid?: Evidence from the COVID‐19 pandemic

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, many nations relied on unprecedented amounts of health‐sector aid to efficiently vaccinate their populations. These vaccines and supporting materials came from a variety of traditional and nontraditional donors, with the majority donor differing by recipient country. Previous research has examined the political benefits to donor states of providing health aid before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Less is known, however, about how recipients view health aid based on the donor and whether this impacts health aid resource use. This research aims to investigate whether recipient preferences over the source of health assistance affects the efficacy of aid, while using a novel vax‐score method to account for existing trends and predictors of vaccine uptake. Using COVID‐19 vaccine donation and uptake statistics collected by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, the IMF, and the World Health Organization, we compare vaccine uptake across many vaccine recipient countries to investigate the impact of vaccine origin (Chinese vs. non‐Chinese source). We find that while increased donated vaccines per capita significantly raises the proportion of the population vaccinated at 12 months, the source of the donated vaccines has no impact. Previously reported recipient‐side concerns over vaccine origin have no impact on population‐level uptake at 12 months. Additionally, we observe that a vax‐score metric derived from vaccine uptake of a suite of childhood vaccines predicts COVID‐19 vaccine uptake beyond differences in GDP and GDP per capita. These results have implications for health aid policy and future research into foreign aid efficacy.