Recent calls by African leaders and other international organizations, including the World Health Organization(WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for vaccine equality seem to be yielding some results. The latest to pledge its support for the African continent is France.
The French presidency said in a statement on Monday, August 30, 2021 that France will send 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa over the next three months.
The vaccines will be allocated and distributed through the African Union’s Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) and COVAX. AVAT is a means of enabling group purchases of vaccines by AU members to help them meet at least 50 percent of their needs.
Enough for 400 million people
The statement by President Macron’s office said that enough jabs have now been purchased through AVAT to enable vaccination of 400 million people in Africa by September 2022, at a cost of three billion dollars. This represents a third of the continent’s population.
In August 2021, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a moratorium on giving third doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines until at least the end of September. The rationale for this moratorium is to allow at least 10 percent of the population of every country to be vaccinated.
So far, low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.
The WHO said on Monday that the Republic of Congo has received more than 300,000 vaccines doses from the United States, its first under COVAX. Most African countries still struggle to obtain enough vaccines to provide herd immunity to their populations.
Call from African Leaders
It can be recalled that at a conference in Berlin last week, African leaders renewed calls for vaccine equity. Specifically, South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, argued that it was unfair that richer countries had vaccinated nearly their entire adult populations while poorer countries still struggle to buy vaccines.
Recent data on regional vaccine administration show that Africa has administered the least vaccines among all the continents. So far, only 2% of Africa’s population of about 1.2 billion is fully vaccinated.
African countries have mostly relied on multilateral and bi-lateral donations. Meanwhile, Activists have described the inequity of vaccines as “apartheid”.
Local vaccine production
To bridge the vaccination gap on the continent, the African Union is looking to set up vaccine production sites in five countries. So far Egypt and South Africa have begun local production of Sinovac and J&J vaccines respectively.
Even though Ghana is yet to commence local production, a recent WHO publication indicated that Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been hailed as exemplary for its planning, speed and high-level leadership.
Ghana was the first country in the world to receive vaccines through COVAX in late February, and just 20 days later, the country had reached over 470 000 people in areas with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, including around 90% of all health workers.
According to the WHO, immunization is one of the most impactful and cost-effective public health interventions available, averting over 4 million deaths every year.
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