Wealthy countries should share Covid-19 doses
THIS World Health Day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is calling on everyone to participate in building a fairer, healthier world.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on inequalities between countries. Amid shortages of essential supplies,
African countries have been pushed to the back of the queue in accessing Covid-19 test kits, personal protective equipment and now vaccines.
Of 548 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered worldwide, only 11 million or two percent, have been in Africa, whereas the continent accounts for around 17 percent of the global population. There are also inequities within countries.
Discrimination based on gender, place of residence, income, educational level, age, ethnicity and disability intersect to disadvantage vulnerable populations. Recent data from 17 African countries show, for example, that a person with secondary school education is three times as likely to have access to contraception as someone who has not attended school.
Those in the highest economic quintile are five times more likely to deliver their babies in health facilities and have their babies vaccinated with BCG compared to those in the lowest quintile.
To improve this situation, we need to act on the social and economic determinants of health, by working across sectors to improve living and working conditions, and access to education, particularly for the most marginalised groups.
Communities need to be engaged as partners, through their networks and associations, to shape and drive health and development interventions.
A key challenge in overcoming inequities is that there is limited data showing who is being missed and why. To address this, national health information systems need to capture age, sex and equity stratified data. This information can then be used to inform decision and policy-making.
At WHO, we are working with countries to strengthen capacities to collect, manage and use data, and to enhance monitoring and action to address avoidable inequities.
In the past year, we have disseminated technical guidance on gender, equity and Covid-19 and trained 30 country teams in gender and health equity integrated programming.
The teams are using skills gained to support equitable health response, including to deal with gender-based violence in the context of Covid-19.
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