We must jab world now
Ex-PM blast at rich nations Total deaths ‘could double’
GORDON Brown has warned that the global Covid death toll could double to 10 million unless richer countries share their vaccines and testing technology.
The UN international health campaigner and former Labour Prime Minister slammed wealthier nations hoarding jabs that expire before use as scandalous.
Mr Brown, who today writes for the Daily Mirror, said: “We’re failing because the richest countries continue to stockpile vaccine and supplies with the result that – even after all of us have boosters – there is a surplus in the richest countries and a shortage in the poorest.
“Co-operation between rich and poor countries failed so badly in 2021 that 60 million vaccines that could have been sent from the global north to the global south, passed their use-by date and had to be destroyed. I hate waste. So does the British public.
“Lives could have been saved by sending Africa vaccines.”
Mr Brown, a global health ambasmedical sador for the World Health Organisation, revealed that the $60billion committed by affluent nations is only about one-twentieth of the $1.1trillion support he marshalled in 2009 to combat the banking collapse.
He added the 1.4 billion vaccine doses produced every month is sufficient to jab everybody in the world and yet the inoculation rate in many countries is dangerously low.
He also warned of another 200 million Covid cases and five million deaths in 2022 unless the international community acts.
Mr Brown said the Omicron strain first discovered in South Africa and rampaging through Britain shows nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
He added: “The longer we delay vaccinating the unprotected, the more likely the virus will keep mutating.”