COVID-19: 83% Africans yet to receive single dose vaccine- WHO
World Health Organisation reports that 83 per cent of people in Africa are yet to receive a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
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The Director-General of the Organisation, Tedros Ghebreyesus disclosed while giving his remarks on Vaccine Equity for Africa.
He stated that this is not only a moral failure but also an epidemiological failure, adding that the poor vaccination rate in the continent is creating the ideal conditions for new COVID-19 variants to emerge.
He, however, said WHO is committed to working with all partners to ensure every country can access vaccines and other tools to protect the health of their populations.
“We can only achieve that goal through genuine cooperation on local vaccine development, production, distribution and uptake, using a diverse range of platforms.
“So we welcome BioNTech’s initiative to increase vaccine production in Africa.
“This innovative, scalable effort will help to meet short-term needs, as well as longer-term projects like BioNTech’s planned malaria vaccine.
“This new effort has involved cooperation with WHO and the new mRNA technology transfer hub we have launched with multiple governments, companies and scientific bodies in South Africa, which I had the opportunity to visit last week,” he said while giving his remarks on Vaccine Equity for Africa on Wednesday.
The WHO chief said that the tools to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control in 2022 are available but stressed that they were being undermined by rampant inequity.
“In many countries with high vaccine coverage, a dangerous narrative has emerged that the pandemic is over.
“In fact, more than half of the world is still struggling with low vaccine coverage and low testing capacity. Currently, 116 countries are off track for our shared target of vaccinating 70 percent of the population of every country by the middle of this year,” he said.
MTO/Punch
