The joint appeal, published this Tuesday in the US daily Washington Post and signed by the leaders of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, warns that inequalities facilitate the emergence of coronavirus variants, which in turn cause new waves of the pandemic in developing countries.
According to experts, vaccine inequalities between rich and poor countries complicate and prolong the pandemic, which has already killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide.
“It is already abundantly clear that there will be no vast recovery from the covid-19 pandemic without ending the health crisis. Access to vaccination is the key to both,” the four officials write.
“Ending the pandemic is possible-and requires global action now,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Bank President David Malpas, and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stress.
On the eve of the G7 summit in the UK this month, the four officials are calling on world leaders to agree on “a better coordinated strategy, backed by new financing, to vaccinate the planet,” and to agree to invest $50 billion in an anti-pandemic plan already put forward by the IMF.
The WHO, which in March called vaccine inequality “grotesque,” last month called on countries with an abundance of vaccines to provide doses to less-equipped countries before they begin vaccinating children and adolescents on their territories.
The UN-backed Covax system was created to facilitate the sharing of vaccines with poor countries, but rich countries have signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies and have been left with most of the available vaccines.
The G7 member countries (USA, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, France, and Italy), meeting in London last month, pledged to support the Covax system, but have not announced new funding, despite calls for them to help poor countries.
