By Haruna Gimba
The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for funding to contained the spread of the deadly Delta variant of the COVID-19.
WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during Wednesday’s on COVID-19, asked the wealthy countries to suspend plans to provide booster shots.
International efforts to slow the COVID-19 Delta variant have been hampered by its particularly virulent nature, which has led to hot spots of hospitalizations and deaths throughout regions with low vaccination levels and limited public health measures.
Tedros insisted that there are solutions to the challenge, such as the Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan.
However, the plan urgently needs an additional $1 billion. Similarly, a $7.7 billion appeal has been launched to scale up the ACT-Accelerator initiative.
The initiative seeks to provide testing, treatments, vaccines and protective equipment for health workers, along with enhanced research and development into the next generation of health tools.
In response to plans by some countries to provide booster jabs, Tedros issued a reminder that only 75 per cent of all vaccine supply has gone to just 10 countries, and that low-income countries have only vaccinated around two per cent of their populations.
Given the huge inequity, the WHO chief called for a temporary moratorium on boosters, to ensure that supplies can be shifted to those countries experiencing major spikes in infection.
Whilst the WHO has convened health experts to debate the available data on the efficacy of boosters, the priority remains providing first shots, and protecting the most vulnerable.
“The divide between the haves and have nots will only grow larger”, he declared, “if manufacturers and leaders prioritize booster shots over supply to low- and middle-income countries.
The WHO chief said that in an interconnected world, in which the COVID-19 virus is mutating quickly, national leaders need to commit to vaccine equity and global solidarity to save lives and slow down variants.
“Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity,” he added, “and if we don’t tackle it together, we will prolong the acute stage of this pandemic for years when it could be over in a matter of months.”
