WHO has ensured that unequal access to COVID-19 vaccines is increasingly “grotesque”

Inequality of access to COVID-19 vaccines between rich and poor countries “grows” and becomes “grotesque”, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom said on Monday Ghebreyesus.

“In January, I declared that the world was on the brink of catastrophic moral failure if urgent measures were not taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines against the virus. We have the means to avoid this failure, but it is surprising to see how little we did to avoid it ”, he said at a press conference.

“The gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries and those applied via COVAX [el mecanismo de la OMS para abastecer a países pobres] keep growing, And it gets more and more grotesque every day», He expressed.

The international Covax system, specially created by the WHO, This year aims to deliver doses to 20% of the population of nearly 200 countries and territories and it also has a funding mechanism to help 92 disadvantaged countries.

“Countries that are currently immunizing younger, healthy people at low risk of contracting COVID-19 are doing so to the detriment of the lives of health workers, the elderly and other at-risk groups in others. country, ”he said. .

“The poorest countries wonder if the rich countries really mean what they say when they talk about solidarity. The unequal distribution of vaccines is not only a moral scandal, but it is also economically and epidemiologically self-destructive, ”he insisted.

He added: “Some countries are rushing to immunize the entire population while other countries have nothing. It can provide security in the short term, but it is a false sense of security ”.

He also indicated that the more the virus is transmitted, the more new variants of the coronavirus are likely to emerge, And the more there are, the more likely they are to avoid vaccines.

“As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted and economic recovery will be further delayed,” he warned.

For his part, the director-general of the WHO said that rich countries could buy some short-term comfort, but that they gave themselves a false sense of security.

Israel is the country that has vaccinated the most, with virtually all of its eligible population receiving the first dose of vaccine and more than half of both doses.

The United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Chile and the United States are the countries next in the list of those who have immunized the majority of their inhabitants.

“Some countries are in the race to immunize their entire population, while others have nothing. It may buy them short-term security, but that’s a false sense of security, ”Tedros warned.

The Covax global vaccine distribution service has so far distributed over 31 million doses in 57 countries.

However, not all countries have taken the route of hoarding vaccines, if they could.

South Korea, a country with sufficient financial means to have negotiated direct contracts with pharmaceutical companies, has chosen to be part of the COVAX platform, created by the WHO in collaboration with other organizations, for a fair distribution of vaccines and wait your turn.

With information from AFP and EFE

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