A health worker fills a syringe with a COVID-19 vaccine. File photoGENEVA, Feb 9Wealthy countries must allocate an additional $16 billion to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, tests and personal protective equipment for low- and middle-income countries, the World Health Organization said in a statement. healthcare organization that is prevalent on Wednesday. Funding is required to run the ACT-Accelerator program, which brings together leading agencies providing low- and middle-income countries with COVID-19 tests, medicines, vaccines, and personal protective equipment.
September 9, 2021, 04:19 PMLiveVaccine Selfishness: The West Failed Vaccine Campaign in Poor Countries» With a significant portion of the world's population still unable to get vaccinated, tested or treated, governments urgently need US$16 billion in grants to fund the work of ACT- Accelerator. These investments will enable them to procure the necessary funds to fight COVID-19 and provide them to low- and middle-income countries,» the statement said. international program for the fair distribution of vaccines. In doing so, each country's contribution will be calculated «based on the size of the national economy and what that country will benefit from a faster global economic and trade recovery.» The $16 billion in funding required will allow ACT-Accelerator to create a vaccine pool of 600 million doses for poor countries, procure 700 million coronavirus tests and medicines for 120 million patients, provide 1.7 million healthcare workers with personal protective equipment, and cover additional costs to reach the goal of vaccinating 70% of the world's population by mid-2022.Estimates WHO, since the start of the pandemic, more than 4.7 billion COVID-19 tests have been carried out worldwide. Of these, only about 22 million tests were carried out in low-income countries, which is only 0.4% of the total number of tests in the world. At the same time, only 10% of people in low-income countries received at least one dose of the vaccine. The WHO emphasizes that such a massive disparity in the distribution of vaccines and means of combating COVID-19 not only takes lives, but also damages the economy, and also poses a risk of new, more dangerous variants that will be resistant to existing vaccines.
