The World Health Organization urged the 20 leaders with the power to overturn the “disgraceful” global imbalance in access to Covid-19 vaccines to reverse the tide before October.
The UN health agency has been increasingly infuriated by what it sees as the moral outrage of rich countries hogging vaccine supply while developing nations struggle to immunize their most vulnerable populations.
Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s frontman on accessing the tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic, urged people to tell politicians and business tycoons that it was electorally and financially safe to increase vaccine coverage in poorer countries. He said the world should be “disgusted” and compared the current situation to an active effort to block the planet’s poor from getting vaccinated.
“There’s probably 20 people in the world that are crucial to solving this equity problem,” Aylward said in a WHO social media live interaction. “They head the big companies that are in charge of this; they head the countries that are contracting most of the world’s vaccines, and they head the countries that produce them.
“We need those 20 people to say, ‘we’re going to solve this problem by the end of September. We’re going to make sure that 10 percent of every country is vaccinated.”
Estimates place the number of vaccines administered globally at 4.5 billion. In high income countries, 104 doses have been injected per 100 people while in the 29 lowest income nations, just two doses have been administered per 100 people.
This massive gap between rich and poor nations makes it difficult for the WHO goals of having every country vaccinate at least 10 percent of its population by September, at least 40 percent by the end of this year, and 70 percent by mid-2022.
As we hope for the WHO appeal to overturn the global Covid-19 vaccine imbalance to reach the powerful decision makers who can reverse the disgraceful trend that threatens to leave poorer countries behind, leaders and decision makers of those developing countries such as the Philippines, will also have to use their power, charm and influence to make it happen.
In a situation where threats and intimidation don’t work, the Philippines may have to put people who can wrangle diplomatic and trade solutions in charge of the effort so our countrymen can have a better chance of getting the vaccine and a shot at recovery from the pandemic that until now remains elusive.*
