Anti-Covid-19 vaccines: international solidarity in slow motion
Rich countries have ordered half of the vaccine doses available, despite hosting only 16% of the world's population.
AP - Matt Rourke
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
It's a half-hearted anniversary for the WHO.
One year after its launch, the agency's ACT Accelerator system, which includes the Covax mechanism, is idling.
It was to allow developing countries to fight against Covid-19 by guaranteeing them access to treatments and vaccines.
The record is more than meager.
And this despite the sending this Friday, April 23 by France of 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines in West Africa.
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With our correspondent in Geneva,
Jérémie Lanche
Some 40 million doses of vaccines sent to around 100 countries.
It is clear that the WHO's appeals for solidarity did not weigh as much as the Organization wished.
Not as much in any case as the
vaccine nationalism
constantly denounced by the WHO.
Today, rich countries have ordered half of the available doses, even though they only house 16% of the population.
In a video message sent to the WHO, Emmanuel Macron says that France will give 500,000 doses by mid-June.
"
The situation is not satisfactory,
" declared the French president.
We have one in six people who have received at least one dose of vaccine in Europe.
and besides that in Africa, it is less than one in a hundred.
This is unacceptable.
All those who have pre-ordered vaccines, many vaccines, France is one of them, the European Union is one, we have a responsibility towards the rest of the world.
Now is the time to share.
"
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To read also: Covid-19: to save the world economy, rich countries must not monopolize vaccines
Opposition on intellectual property rights
The reality is in fact more crude.
In some wealthy countries, one in four people has been vaccinated.
In others, it is one in 500. The donation from France will not be enough to forget the 19 billion dollars missing to finance the WHO Accelerator in 2021.
Another paradox: the opposition of rich countries, including France, before the WTO, to the suspension of intellectual property rights in the context of the uvula against Covid-19, as requested by India and Africa. South.
A
request formulated by these two countries last year
, supported by Doctors Without Borders and a hundred other countries, in order to place human life above the profits of pharmaceutical laboratories in particular.
►
Read also: Covid-19: the Covax initiative seeking funding for more vaccines
Both the WTO and the WHO have deplored the unequal access to vaccines.
The new WTO Director General
recently called
for the development of "voluntary license" agreements for vaccine manufacturing, as AstraZeneca has done with the Serum Institute of India in India.
►
To read also:
The battle for the lifting of patents on vaccines is raging at the WTO
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