Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg will be portrayed on 9 October 2020 during a “Fridays for the Future” performance in front of the Swedish Parliament Riksdag in Stockholm.
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday urged world leaders to do more to tackle inequality against Covid-19 vaccines, describing the growing gap between the number of shots fired in high-income countries and those which is applied in low-income countries as a “tragedy.”
At present, on average, one in four people in high-income countries has received a vaccine for Covid, compared to just one in more than 500 people in low-income countries.
The trend comes despite repeated warnings from health experts that a delay in the equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide could facilitate the emergence of new disease strains and prolong the pandemic.
Thunberg, through its foundation, will donate 100,000 euros ($ 120,000) to the WHO Foundation in support of COVAX, an initiative that strives for global equitable access to Covid vaccines.
“The international community must do more to address the tragedy of vaccine inequality. We have the resources at our disposal to redress the great imbalance that exists around the world today in the fight against COVID-19. , “Thunberg said in a statement.
“As with the climate crisis, we must first help those who are most vulnerable. That is why I support WHO, Gavi and everyone involved in the COVAX initiative, which I believe provides the best way to ensure true vaccine equality and a way out of the pandemic, ‘she added.
Thunberg said earlier this month that she would not attend this year’s COP26, a high-level United Nations climate summit, if current vaccination trends continue.
‘Moral test’
“It is completely unethical that high-income countries now vaccinate young and healthy people when it happens at the expense of people at risk and on the front lines in low- and middle-income countries,” Thunberg said during a virtual WTO briefing.
“This is a moral test. We are talking about showing solidarity today, but vaccine nationalism is the distribution of vaccine,” she added.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, thanked Thunberg for her advocacy in support of the vaccine and the donation to COVAX. He said Thunberg, at the age of 18, was so far the youngest person to contribute to the initiative.
“Greta Thunberg has inspired millions of people worldwide to take action to address the climate crisis, and her strong support for the vaccine to fight the COVID-19 pandemic once again demonstrates her commitment to a healthier, safer and fairer world. place for everyone to make people, ‘said Tedros.
“I call on the world community to follow Greta’s example and to do what they can, in support of COVAX, to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from this pandemic,” he added.
Tedros said earlier that one of the key priorities of the WHO is to increase COVAX’s ambition to help all countries end the pandemic.
COVAX is expected to deliver nearly 100 million vaccines to humans by the end of March, but so far it has distributed only about 38 million doses.
Workers stand at a plane delivering the first batch of PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) at Kyiv International Airport, Kyiv, capital of Ukraine. (Photo credit must be read by Pavlo_Bagmut / Ukrinform / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Pavlo Bagmut | Ukrinform | Barcroft Media via Getty Images
The WHO said it hoped the initiative would catch up in the coming months, but condemned what it described as a ‘shocking imbalance’ in the distribution of vaccines between high- and low-income countries.
The health agency also criticized countries that sought outside the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
The international scramble to secure a wide range of Covid vaccines may make sense from the perspective of an individual country, but it has led to profound inequalities in terms of global allocation.
Canada, for example, has purchased enough Covid vaccines to vaccinate its entire population five times, according to data compiled by researchers from Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center.
At a virtual G-7 summit in February, the group of major economies issued a statement committing to working together on the health response to Covid-19.
The G-7 has also pledged support for ‘affordable and equitable access to vaccines, therapy and diagnostics, reflecting the role of extensive vaccination as a global public good’. ‘