AFRICA wants to buy COVID-19 vaccines, rather than keep waiting for donor-funded doses to arrive, the African Union said on Tuesday, imploring producers to give the continent a fair shot at market access.
The AU also urged manufacturing nations to lift export bans so the continent can begin to address for itself the glaring inequity in access to coronavirus jabs, as wealthy nations hog available doses.
“Vaccine sharing is good. But we shouldn’t have to be relying on vaccine sharing,” Strive Masiyiwa, the AU’s COVID-19 special envoy, told a press conference at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
“We want to buy from those same manufacturers.”
The major COVID-19 vaccine producers have a moral responsibility to ensure equitable access to end the pandemic, he said, but “those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access”.
Just nine vaccine doses have been administered per 100 people in Africa,
You’ve reached your free article limit
Subscribe to enjoy unlimited access to trusted journalism. Cancel anytime.
Subscribe nowNeed help? molokom@insidepolitic.co.za
