RFI — The boss of the World Health Organization has lamented that a small group of countries have monopolised Covid vaccines, as he demanded that “at least ten percent of the population of every country” be vaccinated by September.
“More than 75 percent of all vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries,” declared WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the opening of the annual assembly of health ministers from the body’s 194 member states.
The leader of the UN health body gave a blunt assessment of the situation. “There is no diplomatic way to say it,” he said. “A small group of countries who make and buy the majority of the world’s vaccines…control the fate of the rest of the world”.
He stated that if the number of vaccine doses so far administered worldwide had been distributed fairly, every health worker and elderly person in the world might have been vaccinated.
He called on leaders to support a campaign to vaccinate at least ten percent of the population of each country in the world by September with the aim of reaching 30 percent worldwide by December.
The WHO, in collaboration with the Gavi vaccine alliance, set up Covax, a mechanism to provide vaccines to poor countries. But the programme lacks vaccine doses because rich countries, keen to vaccinate their entire populations, have bought up much of the supply.
Covax has so far delivered 72 million doses to 125 countries and economies since February – barely enough to cover one percent of their respective populations, according to Tedros.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that India, where many of the doses for Covax are manufactured, has halted vaccine exports in order to provide for its own population, as infection rates spiral.
115,000 health professionals died from Covid
Tedros also told the gathering that throughout the world, an estimated 115,000 health professionals had died from Covid-19.
Meanwhile, in a pre-recorded message to the WHO gathering, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that a key lesson from the pandemic was that countries must work together.
He called for the WHO to be empowered to visit countries rapidly in the case of outbreaks with the potential to spark a pandemic, and to access data.
Macron to WHO
WHO should be less reliant on several big donors
Macron also appealed to leaders to ensure better funding for the WHO so that it might be less dependent on “several big donors”.