A new plan to fight the coronavirus epidemic in the less wealthy countries was unveiled on Thursday by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is demanding $ 23.4 billion over the next 12 months for finance it.
The partnership of the world's leading health agencies (called the ACT accelerator) "needs $ 23.4 billion to help countries most at risk to procure and deploy means to fight Covid-19 now and until to September 2022 ”, indicates a statement from the WHO, stressing that this sum is tiny compared to the trillions of dollars of economic losses caused by the pandemic and the cost of the recovery plans.
The pandemic "is far from over"
"Inequitable access to Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines prolongs the pandemic around the world and presents the risk of the emergence of new, more dangerous variants which could escape existing means of combating the disease", she continues. The pandemic, which has already claimed nearly five million lives since it began in China at the end of 2019, "is far from over," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained during '' a press briefing
“So far only 0.4% of tests and 0.5% of vaccines injected worldwide have been used in low-income countries, despite the fact that these countries account for 9% of the world's population” , insists the press release.
The boss of the WHO has been repeating this same message for months and demanding equivalent amounts for at least six months, but without being heard.
He reiterated his call to the heads of state and government of the G20 countries who are to meet this weekend in Rome to fund "in full" the new strategy unveiled Thursday.
Health
Coronavirus: WHO monitors a subvariant of the Delta variant
Health
Coronavirus: The WHO emergency committee warns that the pandemic is "far from over"
Oms
Video
Covid 19
epidemic
Coronavirus
Health