Poor countries last month refused to receive some 100 million doses of the COVID vaccine because their expiration date was approaching, the United Nations said on Thursday.
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The World Health Organization has repeatedly accused rich countries of grabbing vaccines and giving poor countries only short-lived vaccines. A “moral disgrace” to the WHO.
At the end of December, Nigeria thus incinerated more than a million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine given a few months ago by developed countries, but whose expiry date was approaching and which had expired.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), which plays a major role in the international Covax mechanism as the main logistics partner for the distribution of vaccines in disadvantaged countries, the latter now refuse to receive doses whose expiration date is too close.
In December, “more than one hundred million doses were refused,” said the director of the Supply Division of Unicef, Etleva Kadilli, before the European Parliament’s Development Committee.
“The majority of the refusals were for the expiry date,” she said.
She explained that these countries needed doses that could be stored long enough in order to be able to better plan vaccination campaigns and to be able to immunize “populations living in hard-to-reach areas and in fragile contexts”.
The official also explained that about a third of the doses provided by Covax were donations from European countries.
In October and November, 15 million doses donated by the European Union were refused by poor countries, 75% of which were AstraZeneca vaccines whose shelf life – once the vaccines reached their destination – was less than ten weeks.
Ms. Kadilli explained that many countries are calling for vaccine shipments to be “split” and postponed to the next quarter.
The international mechanism for equitable access to the Covax vaccine – which is co-led by the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), WHO and Cepi (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), is preparing to distribute its billionth dose in the coming days.
More than 9.4 billion doses of vaccines have now been administered worldwide, WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday at a meeting of the COVID Emergency Committee.
But 90 countries still have not reached the 40% vaccine target that had been set for the end of 2021, he said, and “more than 85% of the African population, or about one billion people, has not yet received a single dose of vaccine ”.