| dc.description.abstract | The announcement that a vaccine had been discovered for use in the prevention of harmful effects associated with the respiratory SARS COV-2 disease brought much joy, only for the joy to be short lived when high income nations purchased all the vaccines before they had been manufactured. Thus, the following research explored the realm of literature on vaccine nationalism that occurred in the coronavirus pandemic, with the ultimate goal of showing whether actions of vaccine nationalism are included as moral dilemmas, virtuous actions or they are vicious actions that should not be pursued at all when faced with a disaster situation. A philosophical method of research was employed coupled with a scoping review of literature on vaccine nationalism and moral dilemmas, and a reflective equilibrium as the method of analysis. This method was guided by the concepts of moral dilemmas, tenets of principlism, and ideas of virtue ethics from Aristotle and literature that referenced to it. These concepts were used as the framework of constructing arguments over the morality tensions brought by vaccine nationalism. From the review, a total of 65 studies were included for analysis regarding literature on vaccine nationalism, and this study found out that the majority of themes within these studies focused on highlighting the various arguments for pursuing vaccine nationalism, or for going against vaccine nationalism, and the various challenges that arose as a result of pursuing vaccine nationalism. A supplementary search on moral dilemmas was done in the hope of finding out if literature engaged vaccine nationalism as a moral dilemma, and from this search this study found out one study that went to lengths of trying to conceptualise vaccine nationalism as a moral dilemma. The other studies engaged showed the key themes or the various dilemmas reported in literature including health related dilemmas, health versus human rights dilemmas, and other ethical dilemmas noted from the pandemic. From these findings, this study argued that before putting morality litmus tests on vaccine nationalism one has to understand that the act itself was a dilemma that is common in our daily lives. This however did not mean that we should see vaccine nationalism as a dilemma alone, instead this study argued for the need of duty bearers to pursue virtuous deliberation when faced with dilemmas – as life is full of dilemmas but it is virtuous deliberation that helps us navigate against such dilemmas. Towards the end, this study recommended public health policy that is guided by virtuous deliberation and noted the possible limitation of excluding grey literature in the final results, thereby suggesting the need to conduct a systematic review of reasons for future research. | eng |