The world is facing a “catastrophic moral failure” in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines – rich countries gaining more access because they produce higher profits, a world health leader accused on Monday.
While nations like the United States report distributing more than 31 million doses to residents so far, poorer countries have received a huge number of immunizations – and it is simply “not right,” said the World Health Organization’s director general. Health, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Only 25 doses were given in a low-income country – not 25 million, not 25,000, only 25,” said Tedros, whose first name is.
The WHO chief did not disclose the name of the country, but a spokeswoman for the agency later said it was Guinea in West Africa.
“I have to be straightforward: the world is on the brink of catastrophic moral failure,” Tedros said of the current global vaccination effort.
“It is right that all governments want to give priority to vaccinating their own health care workers and the elderly. But it is not right for younger and healthier adults in rich countries to be vaccinated in front of health workers and older people in poorer countries. There will be enough vaccine for everyone, “he said at the opening of the agency’s annual executive committee meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We now face the real danger that even if vaccines bring hope to some, they will become another brick in the wall of inequality between the worlds of those who don’t and those who don’t,” Tedros said.
He said a big problem is that vaccine manufacturers have first gone through the government approval process in rich countries, because that’s where the money has to be made.
“Not only does this ‘I-first’ approach put the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people at risk, but also self-defeat,” the WHO chief insisted, according to the BBC.
“Ultimately, these actions will only prolong the pandemic, it will prolong our pain, the restrictions needed to control it, and the human and economic suffering.”
With Post threads