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WHO’s Dr. Tedros States, 185 Days to Global 70% Vaccination Starts Today
4 January 2022
EIRNS—At his year-end press conference, Dec. 29, World Health Organization executive director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to unite forces to push to the target of 70% vaccination level—still a reachable goal. Speaking from the new WHO hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, based in Berlin, he said, “This is the moment for leaders to banish the politics of populism and self-interest, which are derailing the COVID-19 response and threatening to undermine the response to the inevitable next disease.” While most of the “developed” countries have already reached an approximation of that 70% level, a majority of the “undeveloped” world has not. The entirety of the continent of Africa is not even 10% vaccinated, with a few small tourist-attraction island-nations being the rare exception. Nigeria, Africa’s most-populated nation, is running about 3%, and like many others, is being submerged by the fourth wave of pandemic. In September, the WHO started a drive to vaccinate 40% of Africa by year’s end, a target which BBC was quick to notice on Dec. 31 that only seven of the countries were able to reach. As of Jan. 3, 2022, confirmed cases of COVID-19 from 55 African countries reached almost 10 million, at 9,775,425, according to WHO figures, with deaths just over 228,000, with 40% being from South Africa, alone. While access to vaccines—vaccine apartheid—is a problem, the challenges to meeting Tedros’s stated goal go beyond that, to the level addressed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her Global Health initiative of the Schiller Institute. To provide for the health of the millions in Nigeria, Haiti and Afghanistan (to name but a few), the strategy must start with basic infrastructure: potable water, decent sanitation, hospitals, and the dependable power supply to run them all, including the refrigeration necessary for storing vaccines, blood products and medications. “While 2021 has been hard,” Tedros said, according to coverage in Nigeria’s Premium Times. “I ask everyone to make a New Year’s resolution to get behind the campaign to vaccinate 70% by the middle of 2022. We have 185 days to finish the line of achieving 70% by the start of July 2022, and the clock starts now. If we drive this campaign together, we will all be in a much better place by this time next year.” [mpb] |