Brussels, Belgium /
The United Nations (UN) reported that poor countries rejected in December the donation of aAbout 100 million doses of vaccines against covid-19, which were about to expire.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly accused rich countries of hoarding vaccines and give poor countries vaccines close to their expiration date, which he defined as a “moral shame”.
At the end of December, Nigeria incinerated more than a million donated doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with a very short useful life and that expired before being used.
According to him United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which plays a logistical role in the distribution of vaccines, countries refuse to receive vaccines with a very close expiration date.
In December “more than one hundred million doses were rejected,” declared the director of the Unicef supply division, Etleva Kadilli, before the Committee on Development of the European Parliament.
“Most of the rejections are due to the expiration date,” he said.
The official explained that the countries need doses that can be kept for a while in order to plan the vaccination campaigns and in order to reach populations living in hard to reach areas.
In October and November, 15 million vaccines donated by the European Union were rejected by poor countries. 75 percent of these were AstraZeneca vaccines whose useful life, once delivered, was less than ten weeks.
Worldwide, 9.4 billion vaccines have been administered, the WHO director reported on Thursday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
But he noted that more than 90 countries have not reached the goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the population by the end of 2021.
“More than 85 percent of the population africana, that is to say a billion people, have not yet received a single dose“, he pointed.
DMZ
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