United Nations officials said on Friday that the next year began to take shape in the form of a "humanitarian catastrophe", calling on rich countries not to crush poor countries in the "scramble for vaccines" to confront the emerging coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
The warnings came from the Executive Director of the World Food Program, David Beasley, and the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss the pandemic, which appeared in China late last year and has so far infected about 65 million people around the world.
Paisley said that the year 2021 "will be catastrophic based on what we see now at this stage," noting that famine "knocks the doors" on more than 10 countries.
He added that the year 2021 will probably witness "the worst humanitarian crisis since the founding of the United Nations" 75 years ago, and that "we will not be able to finance everything; therefore we will have to set priorities, and this is only the tip of the iceberg."
For his part, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and his senior officials called for the provision of vaccines to prevent "Covid-19" for all, and for rich countries to help developing countries overcome the pandemic and recover from it.
Tedros also called for an immediate injection of $ 4.3 billion into the global access to vaccines program.
"We simply cannot accept being in a world in which the rich and the powerful are crushing the poor and the marginalized as they scramble for vaccines. This is a global crisis and solutions must be equitably available for the global public good," he told the General Assembly.
A few days ago, the United Nations stated that the pandemic and the measures taken by countries to contain it and its economic repercussions prompted a 40% increase in the number of people in need of humanitarian aid, and appealed for a collection of $ 35 billion to fund aid.