The government of Paraguay announced this Friday (09/08/2023) that it refuses to receive the vaccines of COVAX, of the World Health Organization (OMS), a mechanism that – in the words of the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, María Teresa Barán – was “a total failure.”
“It is inadmissible, the amount of vaccines that we have to accept is completely out of time. Receiving those vaccines would mean an even greater expense for Paraguay, so we strongly reject not receiving those vaccines for Paraguay,” Barán said at a conference press.
Accompanied by the Attorney General of Paraguay, Marco Aurelio González, the head of the Health Ministry said that when the country most needed vaccines, they had no response from the WHO.
Both officials expressed their willingness to negotiate with the COVAX mechanism, the platform for the equitable acquisition and allocation of vaccines worldwide, but emphasized that any solution must be fair and must respect the rights of the Paraguayan population.
In addition, they mentioned the possibility of resorting to international bodies as a dispute resolution mechanism, in case a satisfactory solution is not reached.
“This does not imply that we are going to exhaust the friendly route. We want to get there, only that we consider that COVAX cannot impose unfair situations on Paraguay that are evidently abusive,” added the attorney general.
González assured that Paraguay paid approximately six million dollars to COVAX to receive about three million doses of vaccines against the COVID-19, of which, he asserted, he received one million. “The mechanism did not send the three million doses that it now intends to send, but, then, since Paraguay was only deducted the cost of one million doses, it has a remainder of approximately five million dollars as a balance in its favor within the COVAX mechanism counts,” he said.
According to a statement released by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the COVAX mechanism has proposed two options to Paraguay: that the country “pay an exit fee, which implies an additional payment plus what it has deposited as a balance,” reads the note. The other proposal is that Paraguay pays and receives the rest of the requested vaccines.
The previous Government of Paraguay, which handed over power on August 15, announced on December 7, 2022 that it would insist on terminating the contract with COVAX and would request back the resources it allocated for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. . COVAX must return the equivalent of $5,670,990 in anticovid vaccines that it did not deliver, health authorities reported at the time.
ama (efe, presidency)
2023-09-09 05:16:44
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