South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses the crowd gathered at Miki Yili Stadium ahead of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Freedom Day in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, on 27 April 2019.
MICHELE SPATARI | AFP | Getty Images
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday urged the world’s richest countries to stop stockpiling vaccines and put an end to ‘vaccine nationalism’.
In remarks made during the World Economic Forum’s virtual Davos Agenda meeting, Ramaphosa warned that some countries had ordered more stock of vaccines than they needed, and that it was counterproductive to the global recovery effort.
“Ending the global pandemic will require greater cooperation on the deployment of vaccines, to ensure that no country is left behind in this endeavor,” he said.
“The rich countries of the world have gone out and obtained large doses of vaccines from the developers and manufacturers of these vaccines, and some countries have gone even further than up to four times more than their population needs,” he said.
“It was aimed at storing these vaccines, and now it is being done with the exclusion of other countries in the world that need it most,” he added, urging the major economies to release their surplus stock for distribution to developing countries.
South Africa is the country hardest hit by Covid-19 on the continent, which has largely succeeded in averting the kind of uncontrolled proliferation that has brought the US and much of Europe to a standstill. As of Tuesday morning, the country had recorded more than 1.4 million cases with 41,117 deaths.
In a panel discussion on Tuesday morning as part of the Davos Agenda meeting, John CD, director of Africa CDC, said the continent was facing a “very aggressive second wave” of the pandemic, with deaths averaging 18 last year. % in the 55 African member states. week.
“We as a continent need to realize that vaccines will not be here if we want them to, but as such we really need to concentrate on the public health measures we know work,” he added.
Ramaphosa, who also chairs the African Union, praised the mainland’s co – operation on Covid-19 responses, including the African Medical Supplies Platform, which provided assistance to national health systems, established local co-operation centers and community health workers. deployed to test and treatment efforts.
He also praised the progress of the Task Force on the Vaccination of African Vaccines, which he said was created when AU countries realized how the richest countries in the world behave.
The AVATT directly obtained a preliminary dose of 270 million doses for AU countries, in addition to the 600 million expected from the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative.