Lives literally depend on it, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an open letter signed by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Promises are not translating into vaccines reaching the people that need them. When the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations met at the G7 Summit in June, they collectively announced that 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines would be sent to low- and low-and-middle-income countries to help vaccinate the world.
Yet, as several nations still do not even have enough vaccines for their own health workers, the world is left asking: Where are the doses?
Of nearly 7 billion doses that have been administered globally, just 3% of people in low-income nations have had a jab so far. Where are the rest?
COVAX, the initiative designed to help achieve fair global access to COVID vaccines, has been promised 1.3 billion doses to be donated for the low-income countries it supports, yet it has been able to ship only 150 million (11.5%) to date. Where are the rest?
Among countries represented at the G20, there are a handful with millions of surplus vaccines that are destined to be wasted once they expire.
Every discarded dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, when there are the mechanisms to donate them, should outrage us all. Each dose represents a real person—a mother, father, daughter, or son—who could have been protected.
Each of us come from very different places, backgrounds, and life experiences, but we share a common goal: to tackle global inequity.
Today, we join with others to urge global leaders to end this devastating inequity and end this pandemic once and for all.
Global targets have been set to vaccinate 40% of all countries by the end of 2021 and 70% by the middle of next year. Decisions made this weekend may make or break those targets.
There are many crises that you – the stewards of our planet – must grapple with this weekend: the climate emergency, the state of our global economy, a recommitment to multilateralism. Yet, in many ways, making headway on these priorities depends on whether we can beat this pandemic.
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