Rohit Shishodia

Once again the World Health Organisation (WHO) has expressed concerns over less coverage of COVID-19 vaccination in low-income countries, and especially in Africa.

WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and a group of global health leaders asserted that COVID-19 will not come to an end until and unless there is genuine global cooperation on vaccine supply and access.

Dr. Tedros said that more than 5.7 billion doses have been administered globally, but only 2% of those have been administered in Africa.

“This doesn’t only hurt the people of Africa, it hurts all of us. The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue, and the higher the chances that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective,” WHO chief said.

The UN agency has set targets to vaccinate at least 10% of the population of every country by September 2021, at least 40% by the end of the year, and 70% globally by the middle of 2022.

The global health body informed that almost 90% of the high-income countries have now reached the 10% target, and more than 70% have reached the 40% target.

Not a single low-income country has reached either target

According to the WHO data, worldwide, 5.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered, but 80% have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

The data read that high-income countries have now administered almost 100 doses for every 100 people.

Meanwhile, low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.

The WHO has pointed out that high-income countries have promised to donate more than 1 billion doses, but less than 15% of those doses have been materialised, not just this but the manufacturers have promised to prioritise COVAX and low-income countries.

The agency has called for efforts to increase vaccine supply for lower-income countries which can be done by removing all the barriers to scaling up manufacturing including waiving IP, freeing up supply chains, and technology transfer.