New York, Sept 23 (BUS): Inequality in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine will appear more acute Thursday as many African countries whose populations do not have access to life-saving shots take to the podium to speak to the United Nations’ annual meeting of world leaders.
Already, the fight to contain the coronavirus pandemic has figured prominently in leaders’ speeches — many of them remotely delivered precisely because of the virus. Country after country has acknowledged the wide disparity in access to the vaccine, painting a picture so grim that a solution has at times seemed out of reach, the AP reports.
Some countries have vaccinated their populations, and are well on their way to recovery. “For others, the lack of vaccines and weak health systems are a serious problem,” Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said in a pre-recorded speech on Wednesday. “In Africa, less than 1 in 20 people are fully vaccinated. In Europe, one in two is fully vaccinated. This injustice is clearly unfair.”
The countries that will deliver their annual addresses on Thursday are South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Burkina Faso and Libya.
Also among these is Zimbabwe, where the economic ravages of the pandemic have forced some families to abandon long-standing traditions of caring for the elderly. Uganda, where a sudden rise in virus cases has driven up the cost of scarce hospital beds, leading to concerns about the alleged exploitation of patients by private hospitals.
President Joe Biden announced, on Wednesday, during the Global Immunization Summit held almost on the sidelines of the General Assembly, that the United States will double its purchases of COVID-19 shots from Pfizer to share with the world to one billion doses, with the goal of vaccinating 70% of the world’s population within the next year .
The move comes at a time when world leaders, aid groups and global health organizations are increasingly vocal about the slow pace of global vaccinations and unequal access to vaccines among residents of rich and poor countries.
The World Health Organization says only 15% of promised vaccine donations – from wealthy countries with access to large amounts of them – have been delivered. The UN health agency said it wanted countries to honor their dose-sharing pledges “immediately” and make the shots available for programs that benefit poor countries and Africa in particular.
During an anti-racism event on Wednesday to commemorate a historic but controversial conference 20 years ago, Congo President Félix Tshisekedi pointed to the fact that only one person in every 1,000 people in his country got at least one bullet.
Tshisekedi said that the disparity in the availability of vaccines around the world “does not clearly show the equality of the countries and peoples of this world.”
Similarly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pointed out the failures to share coronavirus vaccines during his speech on Wednesday night, and his hopes for 2020 for “effective multilateralism and effective international solidarity” were dashed a year later, “where one thing is to share goals and the other entirely is to share vaccines.” “
Also Thursday, foreign ministers are set to consider climate change as a security issue when the Security Council, the United Nations’ most powerful body, meets in the morning.
Climate change was a major focus during this week’s General Assembly meeting. World leaders showed “weak signs of progress” on the financial end of the fight against climate change at a special United Nations meeting on Monday, but failed to commit to more significant cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.
RAE