Sharjah24 – Reuters: Less than 3.5% of Africans are vaccinated against COVID-19, far short of its official target of 60%, John Nkengasong, director of Africa's Centres for Disease Control, said on Tuesday (September 14).
World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the same briefing that the continent was being "left behind by the rest of the world" and that this would allow the coronavirus to keep circulating.
African Union special envoy, Strive Masiyiwa, called on IMF and the World Bank to put a mechanism in place allowing poor countries to access vaccines.
"We want to buy from the same manufacturers, but to be fair, those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access," he said, adding "they had a moral responsibility to ensure that others also had access and we find this very sad. It's very sad. We could have address this very differently."
COVAX, the global programme providing COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries is on course to fall nearly 30 percent short of its previous goal of 2 billion shots this year.
"COVAX has also faced several challenges with manufacturers prioritising bilateral deals and many high-income countries tying up the global supply of vaccines," Tedros said, calling on countries and manufacturers to share information on vaccines deliveries.
He also called on countries to "recognize all vaccines with WHO's emergency use listing".
The list includes Pfizer/BioNTech, Astrazeneca-SK Bio, Serum Institute of India, Janssen and Moderna.
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