Nearly 100 million doses of donated COVID-19 vaccines with a short shelf life were rejected by poor countries in December, the UN said Thursday.
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”.
In late December, Nigeria incinerated more than a million donated doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with a very short shelf life that expired before use.
According to the 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 Development Committee of the European Parliament.
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“Most of the rejections are due to the expiration date,” he said.
The official explained that countries need doses that can be stored over time to be able to plan vaccination campaigns and to be able to reach populations living in areas of difficult access.
In October and November, 15 million vaccines donated by the European Union were rejected by poor countries. 75% of these were AstraZeneca vaccines whose shelf life, once delivered, was less than ten weeks.
Worldwide, 9.4 billion vaccines have been administered, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reported Thursday. Likewise, he pointed out that more than 90 countries have not reached the goal of vaccinating 40% of the population by the end of 2021.
“More than 85% of the African population, that is, 1,000 million people, have not yet received a single dose,” he said.
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