By Ibrahim Danlami
Head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhansom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday that a third of the world’s population is yet to receive a single dose of COVID-19 Vaccine including 83 per cent of all Africans.
“This is not acceptable to me, and it should not be acceptable to anyone. If the world’s rich are enjoying the benefits of high vaccine coverage, why shouldn’t the world’s poor? Are some lives worth more than others? He said.
He announced that to tackle future threats on a par with the virus that has now taken well over six million lives, and infected more than 483 million people, the WHO was launching a new strategy to scale up genomic surveillance for deadly pathogens that had “epidemic and pandemic potential”.
Ghebreyesus also unveiled the updated Strategic Preparedness, Readiness and Response Plan for COVID-19.
Medical doctors and health workers in Kano State have expressed worries that COVID-19 vaccination has continued to diminish, as government seems to have abandoned all efforts to actualise the mass vaccination it previously pledged to achieve in the state.
A senior consultant at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital said “The attention of our government has completely shifted to politics of 2023.”
