The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) argued on Tuesday, at a meeting with several heads of international organisations on vaccination in Africa, that inequalities in access to vaccines will worsen the fight against the pandemic worldwide.
“The more inequality there is in access to vaccines in Africa, the less effective the fight against the virus, the less effective the vaccines against the new variants and the more waves of covid-19 we will have globally,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his opening remarks.
The WHO regular press conference had as special participants this week the African Union Special Envoy for covid-19, Strive Masiyiwa, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, and the Director of the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong.
The chairman of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Benedict Oramah, and the UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Vera Songwe, also attended the conference.
In their interventions, the officials converged on the idea that Africa is being left behind in the fight against the pandemic due essentially to bilateral agreements that pharmaceutical companies make with the richest countries and, on the other hand, by the lack of a financial instrument that allows African countries to “sit at the table” of negotiations for the purchase of vaccines.
“So far Covax has given 260 million vaccines to 141 countries, but it has faced several challenges, with pharmaceutical producers prioritising bilateral agreements and rich countries buying huge quantities,” Tedros Ghebreyesus lamented.
“I may sound like a broken record, I don’t care, I will keep asking for equality in vaccines until we get it, but there are other voices asking for the same thing,” he concluded, referring to the WHO guests, important personalities for Africa on the economic, financial and health fronts.
Vera Songwe recalled that the continent lost US$29 billion in production for each month of confinement.
“When we say the pandemic is an economic issue, we say it because it is true, and we need financing to see how international financial structures can come together to respond to the crisis,” she stressed.
Praising the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $650 billion allocation of new capital, of which $33.6 billion is for the African continent, Songwe stressed that he expects the transmission of these Special Drawing Rights from richer to poorer countries to continue.
“Because this is going to be a continuous expenditure that undermines the effort that the continent has made in terms of improving fundamental macroeconomic indicators and debt levels, and funding is needed to combat the crisis without compromising economic recovery,” he stressed.
During the interventions, the speakers were unanimous in criticising the imposition of the so-called ‘vaccine passports’, considering that this creates discrimination in the possibility of making trips.
