GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) called on Thursday on the world’s 20 richest nations, holding a summit next week, to step up donations of COVID-19 doses to the global south where vaccinations lag.
“The @g20org countries must fulfil their dose-sharing commitments immediately,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing.
Gordon Brown, WHO ambassador for global health financing, said that if the world’s richest countries cannot mobilise for a vaccine airlift to developing countries, an epidemiological and economic “dereliction of duty will shame us all”.
There is still a shortfall of 500 million vaccines to reach WHO’s 40% vaccination target in all countries in mid-2022, while 240 million doses are lying unused in the West, Brown said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Sri Kalyani Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru)
