Africans let UN know they need vaccines
The inequity of COVID-19 vaccine distribution came into sharp focus Thursday as many of the African countries whose populations have little to no access to the life-saving shots spoke at the U.N.’s annual meeting of world leaders. Some called for member states to relax intellectual property rights in order to expand vaccine production.
“No one is safe unless we are all safe,” was the common refrain.
“The virus doesn’t know continents, borders, even less nationalities or social statuses,” Chad’s president Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, told the General Assembly. “The countries and regions that aren’t vaccinated will be a source of propagating and developing new variants of the virus. In this regard, we welcome the repeated appeals of the United Nations secretary general and the director general of the (World Health Organization) in favor of access to the vaccine for all. The salvation of humanity depends on it.”
Country after country acknowledged the wide disparity in accessing the vaccine, painting a picture so bleak that a solution has at times seemed impossibly out of reach.
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa pointed to vaccines as “the greatest defense that humanity has against the ravages of this pandemic.”
He and others urged U.N. member states to support a proposal to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization to allow more countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
Angola president João Lourenço said it was “shocking to see the disparity between some nations and others with respect to availability of vaccines.”
“These disparities allow for third doses to be given, in some cases, while, in other cases, as in Africa, the vast majority of the population has not even received the first dose,” Lourenço said.
The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Israel are among the countries that have begun administering boosters or announced plans to do so.
Namibia president Hage Geingob called it “vaccine apartheid,” a notable reference given the country’s own experience with apartheid.