[ad_1]
On Thursday, the unfairness of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution became the focus of more attention, as leaders of many African countries took to the podium to speak at the UN General Assembly, and the populations of these countries have almost no access to life-saving vaccines.
In the past few days, world leaders’ speeches have highlighted the struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic—many of these speeches were conducted remotely due to the coronavirus itself. One country after another has admitted that there are huge differences in access to vaccines, painting a picture so bleak that solutions sometimes seem out of reach.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa pointed out on Thursday that vaccines are “humanity’s greatest defense against the pandemic.”
He said: “Therefore, the international community has not adhered to the principle of solidarity and cooperation in ensuring fair access to the COVID-19 vaccine. This is a very worrying issue.”
“This is a complaint against humanity. More than 82% of the world’s vaccine doses are obtained by rich countries, and less than 1% goes to low-income countries.”
He and others urged UN member states to support a proposal to temporarily abandon certain intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow more countries, especially low- and middle-income countries, to produce COVID-19 vaccine.
The “shocking” gap
The President of Namibia Haag Geingob criticized his so-called “vaccine apartheid”, expressing regret that although people in some countries are in the stage of receiving booster injections, people in other countries have not yet received the first dose of vaccine.
Countries such as the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Israel have started using boosters or announced plans to do so.
At the same time, the President of Angola, Joao Lorenco, stated that “it is shocking to see the difference in vaccine supply between some countries and other countries”.
“These differences allow for the third dose in some cases, while in other cases, such as in Africa, the vast majority of the population has not even received the first dose,” Lorenzo said.
President Emerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe called on the international community to “strengthen multilateralism and unify goals” in vaccine distribution.
He said in a pre-recorded speech: “The resulting uneven global vaccination patterns, such crowded and unfair distribution is unacceptable.”
Mnangagwa added: “Vaccine nationalism is self-defeating and goes against the mantra that no one is safe until everyone is safe.”
Benido Impouma, the project director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Africa Project, pointed out at a weekly video news conference that the surge of new COVID-19 cases in Africa is beginning to ease, “but there are 108,000 new cases and more than 3,000 deaths in the past week. Lost, 16 countries are still recovering, this struggle is far from over.”
“It is expected that there will be a new increase in cases in the next few months,” Impuma said. “Without extensive vaccinations and other public and social measures, the fourth wave on the African continent could be the most severe and cruel.”
On Wednesday, at the Global Vaccination Summit held almost on the sidelines of the conference, President Joe Biden announced that the United States will buy Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to double to 1 billion doses to share with the world. The goal is to vaccinate. . It will account for 70% of the global population next year.
Dose sharing
The WHO stated that only 15% of pledged vaccines — from rich countries that have access to large amounts of vaccines — have been delivered.
The United Nations health agency said it hopes that countries “immediately” fulfill their dose sharing commitments and provide vaccines for projects that benefit poor countries and Africa.
Earlier this year, Biden broke with European allies and agreed to abandon the intellectual property rights of vaccines, but did not reach the necessary global consensus on the issues required by WTO rules on Wednesday.
Although some NGOs claim that these exemptions are essential to promote global vaccine production, U.S. officials admit that this is not the biggest limiting factor in unfair vaccine distribution—some people worry that if there is no necessary production infrastructure, the exemption will be nothing. significance. Make highly complex jabs.
[ad_2]
Source link