Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is pictured during a “Friday for the Future” protest in front of the Swedish Riksdagen parliament in Stockholm on October 9, 2020.
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday pressured world leaders to do more to combat the inequality of the Covid-19 vaccine, describing the growing gap between the number of shots being administered in high-income countries and those administered in low-income countries tragically. “
Currently, an average of one in four people in high-income countries has received a Covid vaccine, compared to only one in 500 people in low-income countries.
The trend comes despite repeated warnings from health experts that a delay in the equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide could facilitate the emergence of new strains of disease and prolong the pandemic.
Thunberg, through its foundation, will donate 100,000 euros ($ 120,000) to the WHO Foundation in support of COVAX, an initiative that works for equitable global access to Covid vaccines.
“The international community must do more to deal with the tragedy of vaccine inequity. We have the means at our disposal to correct the great imbalance that exists today around the world in the fight against COVID- 19 “Thunberg said in a statement.
“As with the climate crisis, we must first help those who are most vulnerable. That is why I am supporting the WHO, Gavi and all those involved in the COVAX initiative, which I believe offers the best way forward to ensure true vaccine equity and a way out of the pandemic, ”he added.
Thunberg said earlier this month that he would not attend this year’s COP26, a high-profile United Nations climate summit, if current vaccination trends continued.
“Moral test”
“It is not entirely ethical for high-income countries now to vaccinate young and healthy people if this happens at the expense of people at risk and in the forefront of low- and middle-income countries,” Thunberg said during a virtual briefing of the WHO.
“This is a moral test, we are talking today about showing solidarity and yet vaccine nationalism is what manages the distribution of vaccines,” he added.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, thanked Thunberg for his advocacy for vaccine equity and donation to COVAX. He said Thunberg, 18, was the youngest person to date to contribute to the initiative.
“Greta Thunberg has inspired millions of people around the world to take action to tackle the climate crisis and her strong support for vaccine equity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic once again demonstrates her commitment to of our world a healthier, safer and fairer place for all people, ”Tedros said.
“I demand that the global community follow Greta’s example and do what she can, in support of COVAX, to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from this pandemic,” he added.
Tedros has said earlier that one of WHO’s top priorities is to increase COVAX’s ambition to help all countries end the pandemic.
COVAX was expected to deliver nearly 100 million vaccines to people by the end of March, but so far it has only distributed about 38 million doses.
Workers are next to a plane that delivered the first batch of vaccine PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 (Comirnaty) to the international airport of Kiev, Kiev, capital of Ukraine. (Photo credit should read Pavlo_Bagmut / Ukrinform / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Pavlo Bagmut | Ukrinform | Barcroft Media via Getty Images
The WHO has said it hopes the initiative can recover in the coming months, but has condemned what it describes as a “shocking imbalance” in vaccine distribution among low- and high-income countries.
The health agency has also criticized countries that have sought their own vaccine offers outside the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
The international struggle to get a wide range of vaccines against Covid may make sense from a country’s perspective, but it has led to profound inequalities in terms of global allocation.
Canada, for example, has bought enough Covid vaccines to inoculate its entire population five times, according to data collected by researchers at Duke University’s Center for Global Health Innovation.
At a virtual G-7 summit in February, the group of major economies issued a statement pledging to “intensify cooperation on the health response to Covid-19.
“The G-7 also pledged to support” affordable and equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, reflecting the role of extensive immunization as a global public good. “