COVID-19: WHO urges developed nations to donate 250m doses of vaccine

On Jun 5, 2021

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has appealed to developed countries to donate 250 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to protect low-income countries.

The Senior Advisor to Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General, Bruce Aylward, who is also theHead of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) Hub, said this via Zoom, he made this urgent appeal for 250 million doses to protect the frontline workers and the most vulnerable people.

Aylward said that of those two billion doses, “over 75 per cent” had gone to just 10 countries, notably China, U.S. and India.

He said: “At the other end of that spectrum, only about 0.5 per cent of doses had reached the lowest income countries, which account for about 10 per cent of world population.

“This had led increasingly to a two-track recovery, characterised by the successful rollout of vaccines to high-risk populations and even younger populations in higher income and vaccine-producing countries.

“By contrast, in the lower income countries, they’re still struggling to get sufficient product, just to be able to vaccinate the healthcare workers.

“They are also struggling to get sufficient vaccine for older populations, who are really the key to getting out of the health, societal and economic crisis that we’re in the midst of.’’

“The call is for a quarter of a billion doses through the period through end of September to be donated, at least 100 million of those in June and July – that’s what we need to get the system going.”

He noted that on Thursday the U.S. had helped to kick start the appeal and bolster the UN-partnered equitable vaccine distribution scheme COVAX with the announcement that it intended to donate up to 80 million doses, including an initial 25 million shots, this month.

“That’s an important start, but we need many other countries to be joining, and important for the U.S., crucially, is they said these doses are going to come in June.

“It was absolutely ridiculous that some countries were still unable to protect their key workers amid escalating epidemics, though vaccines had been available for six months.

“This week, we’ll probably pass the two billion doses – if we have not already passed it…in terms of number of doses of these vaccines, these new COVID vaccines that have actually been developed.

“And these have been distributed now in over 212 countries,” he said.

MTO/The Sun