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 hoarding vaccines and only giving poor countries vaccines with short shelf lives. A “moral shame” for the WHO.
At the end of December, Nigeria thus incinerated more than a million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine donated 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 are now refusing to receive doses whose expiry date is too close.
In December, “more than one hundred million doses were refused”, declared the director of the Supply Division of Unicef, Etleva Kadilli, before the Development Committee of the European Parliament.
“The majority of refusals were due to the expiry date,” she said.
She explained that these countries need doses that can be stored long enough to be able to better plan vaccination campaigns and to be able to vaccinate “populations who live in hard-to-reach areas and in fragile contexts”.
The official also explained that about a third of the doses provided through 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 arrived at their destination – was less than ten weeks.
Ms Kadilli explained that many countries are asking for vaccine deliveries to be “split” and pushed back to the next quarter.
The international mechanism for equitable access to the Covax vaccine – which is co-led by the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), the 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 chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting of the COVID Emergency Committee on Thursday.
But 90 countries have still not reached the 40% vaccine target that was set for the end of 2021, he said, and “more than 85% of Africa’s population, or about one billion people, has not yet received a single dose of vaccine”.