The world is facing a “ catastrophic moral failure ” over the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines – with rich countries gaining more access as they bring in higher profits, a global health leader said Monday.
While countries such as the US so far report that more than 31 million doses have been distributed to residents, poorer countries have received a meager number of vaccinations – and that’s just ‘not right,’ said World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Only 25 doses have been given in one country with the lowest incomes – not 25 million, not 25,000, but 25,” said Tedros, going by his first name.
The WHO chief did not disclose the country’s name, but a spokeswoman for the agency later said it was Guinea in West Africa.
“I have to be blunt: the world is on the brink of catastrophic moral failure,” Tedros said of the world’s current vaccination efforts.
“It is good that all governments want to prioritize the vaccination of their own health workers and the elderly. But it is not correct that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are more likely to be vaccinated than 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 board meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We now face the real danger that, even if vaccines give some hope, they will become a new stone in the wall of inequality between the worlds of the haves and have-nots of the world,” said Tedros.
He said a big problem is that vaccine makers have first gone through the government approval process in rich countries, because that’s where the money has to be made.
“This I-first approach not only endangers the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, it is also self-destructive,” the WHO chief stressed, according to the BBC.
Ultimately, these actions will only prolong the pandemic, lengthen our pain, the constraints needed to manage it, and human and economic suffering.
With pole wires