PORTLAND — Portland Trail Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic is looking to make a difference to combat the COVID-19 cases in his home country of Bosnia.

In a new piece for ESPN, Nurkic noted to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that he has attempted to buy a supply of unused COVID-19 vaccines from the United States and send them back home.

Unfortunately, Nurkic is not allowed to do so.

“They just have donations, but not enough to vaccinate the people,” Nurkic told ESPN. “I tried to buy it for the whole country. I figured out the money, the plan, and everything. But we still can’t do it.

“Even if we find vaccines, I guess United States laws say that until the American people are vaccinated, you can’t sell it. So, I don’t know what else to do. I really tried.”

There’s an abundance of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. Nurkic, who received a COVID-19 vaccine with Blazers teammates in March, is frustrated that he can’t purchase them to help people of his home country while those in the U.S. refuse to get their shots.

“All these countries are suffering and you have the United States, obviously the No. 1 in the world, has the vaccines and people don’t want to get vaccinated,” Nurkic said. “I just feel like humanity has kind of failed, because all the countries around should get at least some of those vaccines, right?”

ESPN’s story notes that Bosnia and Herzegovina have a confirmed 200,000 cases and 96,000 deaths from COVID-19. That difficult circumstance, as well as Nurkic’s own personal experience with the virus, is a driving point to why he’s seeking help.

During the end of the 2019-2020 NBA season in the NBA bubble, Nurkic was among those greatly impacted by the pandemic. The 26-year-old said he lost several family members to COVID-19, including his grandmother.

The Trail Blazers center has one year remaining on his contract with Portland.