IMF, WTO, WHO and World Bank chiefs issue call for vaccine equality
GENEVA: World leaders must make a "new commitment" to a more equal distribution of coronavirus vaccines to bring the pandemic under control, the heads of four major global organisations said on Tuesday.
Their joint rallying cry and calls for tens of billions of dollars more in funding comes as concerns rise that vaccine inequality between wealthy and poor nations is further complicating and prolonging a pandemic that has already killed more than 3.5 million people globally.
In their appeal, the heads of the World Health Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) blamed the gap in vaccination programmes for the emergence of virus variants that have fuelled fresh outbreaks in the developing world.
"It has become abundantly clear that there will be no broad-based recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic without an end to the health crisis," they said in a joint op-ed in The Washington Post.
"Access to vaccination is key to both."
They called on the Group of Seven wealthiest economies to agree on a "stepped-up coordinated strategy, backed by new financing, to vaccinate the world" at their next meeting in Britain later this month.
FUNDS NEEDED
The leaders of the four organisations also urged the G-7 countries to fund a US$50 billion (S$67 billion) plan already proposed by the IMF to help even out those inequities and accelerate the end of the pandemic.
The aim is to vaccinate at least 40 percent of the global population by the year end and at least 60 percent by the end of next year, to enable a lasting economic recovery.
IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva stressed that the issue was not just about health.
"Our data shows that, in the near term, vaccinating the world is the most effective way to boost global output...
"Vaccine policy is economic policy."
WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called for cooperation to remove trade restrictions hampering the movement of vaccines and the raw materials needed to produced them, and production capacity to be dramatically scaled up through technology transfer. - AFP
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