Africa CDC Calls for Fair Distribution of Covid-19 Vaccine

All nations should join hands in a global effort to procure and distribute potential vaccines against the coronavirus across the globe, the head of Africa’s diseases control body. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said 76 rich nations were now committed to joining a global Covid-19 vaccine allocation, plan co-led by the WHO, aims to help buy and fairly distribute the shots. The US, however, said it would not join the effort, called Covax, due to objections by President Donald Trump’s administration to WHO involvement. “We are in this together. No country will be safe if any other country in the world still has cases of Covid-19,” John Nkengasong, the head of the Addis Ababa-based Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa-CDC), told an online news conference. Through the AU, Africa has developed a plan to access Covid-19 vaccines when they become available, Nkengasong said, adding that the continent will also hold talks with Covax, supplementing other talks with individual nations such as China. The continent has fared better than expected, health experts and government officials on the continent say, during the first wave of the pandemic, which began in March.

SOURCE: BUSINESS DAY LIVE