World Bank, AU join hands to deploy Covid-19 vaccines to Africa
A medic administers a Covid-19 vaccine at the headquarters of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council in Nairobi on March 31.
What you need to know:
- Some 35.9 million Covid-19 doses have been administered across Africa so far.
The World Bank and the African Union's (AU) Covid-19 Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) on Monday announced a decision to work together to deploy vaccines to 400 million Africans.
This came after the president of the World Bank, David Malpass, met with the AVATT to discuss ways to accelerate vaccine deployment to Africa, according to a joint statement by the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
AVATT had previously secured up to 400 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot Covid-19 vaccine with the support of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). The World Bank and AVATT stressed the importance of countries getting sufficient doses as quickly as possible and in an affordable way.
Covid-19 vaccines are critical for achieving the goal of vaccinating at least 60 per cent of Africans, said John Nkengasong, the director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and member of AVATT.
Benedict Oramah, the president of Afreximbank, said his bank, by providing a 2-billion-U.S.-dollar guarantee on behalf of the AU member states, was able to help put Africa in a negotiating position with producers in negotiating vaccine procurement.
Under the AVATT structure, AU member states are allocated vaccines according to the size of their populations through a pooled procurement mechanism. Once vaccines arrive across Africa, additional efforts will be required to support their deployment, which includes in-country distribution, securing the required systems, capacities and capabilities for vaccination.
As of Monday evening, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Africa had reached 5,049,036, with 134,818 deaths and 4,524,651 recoveries, according to Africa CDC.
African countries have so far acquired around 54.9 million Covid-19 vaccines, which may cover about 2.1 per cent of the population at the continental level, Africa CDC said.
Some 35.9 million Covid-19 doses have been administered continent-wide, accounting for about 65 per cent of the total supply available in Africa.
With minimal access to Covid-19 vaccines across the continent, latest figures show that only around 0.6 per cent of Africa's population has received a full vaccine regimen.
