The World Health Organisation (WHO) and its partners say they hope to provide Africa with about 30 percent of the Covid-19 vaccines the continent needs by February 2022.
Development Diaries understands that out of 5.7 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines administered around the world so far, only two percent have been in Africa.
Data from the WHO shows that 42 African countries are set to miss the global goal of vaccinating the most vulnerable ten percent of their population against Covid-19 by the end of September.
The African Union (AU) has accused vaccine manufacturers of denying African countries a fair chance to buy them, and urged manufacturing countries to lift export restrictions on vaccines and their components.
To date, fewer than four percent of Africans have been fully immunised and most of the vaccine doses administered around the world have been given in just ten rich countries.
‘Those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access, we could have handled this very differently’, the AU Special Envoy for Covid-19, Strive Masiyiwa, said at a WHO briefing from Geneva.
In order to reach the 60 percent vaccination goal, the AU had said it was going to buy half the doses needed, while half were to come as donations through the COVAX programme backed by the WHO and the GAVI global vaccine alliance.
‘We want access to purchase’, Masiyiwa said.
GAVI Chief Executive Officer, Seth Berkley, said his organisation had been counting on supplies from India but had received no doses from India since March, when India imposed export restrictions.
COVAX is set to fall nearly 30 percent short of its previous goal of two billion shots this year. GAVI and the WHO have blamed the shortfall on a range of factors including export restrictions on the Serum Institute of India (SII).
‘Vaccine sharing is good but we [should not] have to be relying on vaccine sharing, particularly when we can come to the table with structures in place and say we also want to buy’, Masiyiwa said.
Masiyiwa also called for patent waivers on vaccines, saying that Africa wanted to set up its own manufacturing capacity.
India, one of the world’s biggest vaccine producers, imposed a ban on vaccine exports in March this year in order to prioritise local vaccinations.
The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged pharmaceutical companies to prioritise the COVAX initiative, which is designed to share vaccines globally and provide shots at no cost to lower-income countries.
Source: WHO
Photo source: AMISOM Public Information
