On Friday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to abandon poor countries until rich countries complete the vaccination of their populations with anti-Covid-19 vaccines. He said: “If we keep the vaccines for ourselves and do not share them, then there will be 3 main problems (…) The first is to record a catastrophic moral failure, the second is to allow the pandemic to continue, and the third to significantly slow down the economic recovery.” “This is therefore a moral mistake, and it will not help stop the epidemic and will not restore the means of livelihood. Is this what we want? It is up to us to make a decision,” he said, staring at the camera during a bi-weekly press conference.
The WHO Director-General gave examples from the past to give more weight to his warning.
He recalled that some poor countries had to “wait ten years” to obtain the necessary drugs to combat HIV (AIDS). In the case of swine flu, poor countries got the vaccine against it, “but after the pandemic ended.”
Ghebreyesus reiterated the warning about nationalism regarding vaccines, stressing that “we live in a global village” and that no one will be safe unless COVID-19 is contained in all parts of the world.
The statements of the international official came in the context of recording a lack of supplies of some of the most effective vaccines on the market, which angered rich countries.
On Friday, the World Health Organization criticized the European Union’s adoption of a mechanism to monitor exports of vaccines against Covid-19 outside its region, and to prevent the export of doses intended for Europeans.
