Africa Administers Two Per Cent Of Global Vaccine Doses – WHO
The African continent has administered 19.6 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, which translates to only two per cent of the global figure, the WHO said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, 80 per cent of all doses administered globally have been in high and upper-middle-income countries, the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said during his opening remarks at a high-level emergency virtual meeting of African Ministers of Health on the COVID-19 situation in Africa.
The event had in attendance African leaders, including the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Mahamat; South African President Cyril Ramaphosa; and President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also in attendance were the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti; the Chairman, Governing Board, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Prof Moustafa Mijiyawa; the Director, Africa CDC, Dr John Nkengasong; and other ministers of health on the continent.
In his remarks, Ghebreyesus said Africa was the only region to have developed a unified continental strategy on COVID-19, adding that the strategy had delivered results.
In a statement, Ghebreyesus said although Africa had suffered as a result of the pandemic, it had not yet seen the same scale of devastation as in some other regions.
He, however, warned against complacency, saying, “What is happening now in many other parts of the world can happen in our Africa if we let down our guard. In many countries, the emergence of rapidly spreading variants, combined with a premature easing of public health and social measures, and the inequitable distribution of vaccines, is having tragic consequences as we all know,” he said.
