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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed on Thursday for $8 billion to help equitably vaccinate 40% of people in all countries by the end of the year, as the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a plan that aims to inoculate 70% of the world by mid-2022.
Guterres urged the Group of 20 rich countries to deliver on their “desire to get the world vaccinated” at a summit in Rome later this month.
“Not to have equitable distribution of vaccines is not only a question of being immoral, it is also a question of being stupid,” he said at a joint news conference with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
So far, more than 6.3 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered globally.
But more than half of the world has yet to receive at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Our World in Data, and less than 5% of Africans have been fully vaccinated, according to the continent’s top public health official.
#G20 countries have frequently spoken of their desire to get the world vaccinated.
Their meeting later this month will be an opportunity to deliver.
Now is the time to step up, mobilise resources and turn vaccine equity into reality.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 8, 2021
The WHO plan calls for countries with high vaccine coverage to allow expected deliveries of additional doses to first go to the COVAX global sharing program and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) for distribution to where they are more urgently needed. It also wants the richer nations to fulfill and accelerate vaccine dose-sharing and donation commitments to COVAX, and make new pledges.
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Source : france24
