Inequity of COVID-19 vaccines grows ‘more grotesque every day’ – WHO chief

(United Nations News) The growing gap between the number of vaccines being given in rich countries and those administered through COVAX is becoming “more grotesque every day”, the head of the UN health agency said on Monday.

“In January, I said that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure unless urgent steps were taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) told journalists at a regular news briefing. 

“We have the means to avert this failure, but it’s shocking how little has been done to avert it”, he added, noting that WHO has been working “day and night to find solutions to increase the production and equitable distribution of vaccines”.   

The WHO chief pointed out that while some countries are vaccinating their entire populations, others have no shots. 

“The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, it’s also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating”, he said, pointing out that some nations are vaccinating low risk, younger people at the cost of “health workers, older people and other at-risk groups in other countries”. 

Read more at: United Nations News

Source: CARICOM TODAY