United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has begun laying the groundwork for the rapid, safe and efficient delivery of the eventual Covid-19 vaccine by purchasing and pre-positioning syringes and other necessary equipment.

UNICEF, according to a statement, said it will stockpile 520 million syringes in its warehouses, part of a larger plan of one billion syringes by 2021, to guarantee initial supply and help ensure that syringes arrive in countries before the Covid-19 vaccines.

‘Vaccinating the world against Covid-19 will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history, and we will need to move as quickly as the vaccines can be produced’, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

‘In order to move fast later, we must move fast now. By the end of the year, we will already have over half a billion syringes pre-positioned where they can be deployed quickly and cost effectively. That’s enough syringes to wrap around the world one and a half times’.

It was gathered that Gavi will reimburse UNICEF for the procurement of the syringes and safety boxes, which shall then be used for the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX Facility) and for other Gavi-funded immunisation programmes if necessary.

UNICEF, it was also learnt, is also buying five million safety boxes so that used syringes and needles can be disposed in a safe manner by personnel at health facilities.

‘Accordingly, UNICEF is “bundling” the syringes with safety boxes to ensure enough safety boxes are available to go along with the syringes’, the statement read.

It is understood that injection equipment such as syringes and safety boxes have a shelf life of five years.

Lead-times for such equipment are also long as these items are bulky and need to be transported by sea freight.

Source: UNICEF

Photo source: UNICEF