Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres blasted the continuing “moral failure’’ of vaccine inequality.
Guterres, spoke about the vaccine gap at the launch on Wednesday of a new World Health Organisation (WHO) push to help developing countries catch up.
The WHO wanted to collect $16 billion dollars from rich countries to provide vaccines, tests and medicines over the next few months.
However, with the money for the so-called ACT-Accelerator, a pool of 600 million vaccine doses could be created, 700 million tests could be bought and the treatment of 120 million patients could be made possible, the WHO said.
In Africa, in contrast to Europe and other rich regions, only 8 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to estimates.
“Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times and people and countries are paying the price,’’ the UN chief.
