Vaccinate Our World!’ to Protect All Humanity!
- Global leaders, the scientific community and citizens around the world call on governments, vaccine manufacturers and public health organizations to guarantee equal access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
- Low-income countries have only received less than 1% of the total 950 million doses that have been administered worldwide. Latin America and the Caribbean —except for Chile— averages only 8.2 doses per 100 inhabitants, while developed countries average 51.
- The Vaccinate Our World Initiative (VOW) was launched in 45 countries, with press calls in Bangkok, Johannesburg, London, São Paulo, Mexico City and Washington, D.C.
Washington D.C. (April 27th, 2021).- “If the immoral disparity in the distribution of vaccines does not bother you, the serious threat that this poses to the world should,” is the main statement of the Vaccinate Our World campaign, which brings together thousands of organizations, scientific community, global leaders and citizens around the planet to raise their voices together against the evident inequity in access to COVID19 vaccines.
The initiative, which is spearheaded by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest provider of care and treatment for HIV and AIDS in the world, seeks to “sound the alarm bells” to avoid an even more catastrophic scenario without equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines to all countries, especially the poorest.
This initiative raises five key points:
- The G20 countries must commit to contribute 100 billion dollars to finance the global vaccination effort.
- To set the to produce and distribute 7 billion doses of vaccines worldwide in one year.
- The pharmaceutical companies and governments must release or suspend patents on COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
- The countries must be 100% transparent in the information and data that are shared regarding the pandemic.
- The world leaders must promote international cooperation as a driving force to end the pandemic and put political interests aside.
“Although rich nations said at the beginning of the pandemic that everyone would receive vaccines, low-income countries have received less than 1% of the total 950 million doses that have been administered in the world,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein. “While the richest countries selfishly hoard vaccines, experts predict that it will probably be until the end of 2022, when the world’s most vulnerable populations have been vaccinated and their lives are safe. That is unacceptable”, he added.
AHF, an organization whose experience is based on 34 years of work in the response to HIV and AIDS, and which has been present in the response to the Ebola virus outbreaks in Sub-Saharan Africa, assures that with a virus such as SARS- CoV2, “no country will be safe until all people in all the citizen of the world are vaccinated”, since the virus does not recognize borders and is highly infectious.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently noted that 87% of the more than 700 million vaccines administered worldwide have gone to high- or upper-middle-income countries, while low income countries have barely received 0.2%. High-income countries have vaccinated an average of 1 in 4 people, while only 1 in 500 people in low-income countries have received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Of all the vaccines produced in the world, three-quarters were concentrated in just 10 countries, while there are at least 30 countries that have not received a single dose.
As of April 23, on average in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, 8.2 doses had been applied per 100 inhabitants, with the exception of Chile, with 71 doses per 100 inhabitants.
In contrast, in developed countries the average is 51 doses per 100 inhabitants, and in cases such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates, it has exceeded 100 doses per 100 inhabitants.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, most countries depend on the joint COVAX mechanism to access vaccines (created by the WHO and the Global Initiative for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI), which has been very slow due to the lack of production inputs and bureaucratic processes of pharmaceutical companies.
In addition to securing sufficient funding for vaccine procurement, vaccine production must be increased worldwide, and access to patents should be free-flowing to allow for the rapid scale-up of production. Ending the pandemic will also require much more information sharing and cooperation between nations—including removing self-imposed restrictions on vaccine exports for those countries with a surplus. Leaders from the G20 and global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank must also VOW to step up their contributions immediately.
“Nations around the world have spent trillions of dollars fighting the new coronavirus and have lost trillions in productivity with their devastated economies: $100 billion is a small price to pay to protect everyone on the planet with vaccines. They save lives”, Weinstein said.
The Vaccinate Our World campaign, promoted worldwide with the acronym VOW, proposes to gather as many digital signatures as possible from organizations and individuals, through its website www.VaccinateOurWorld.org, with an intense campaign in at least 45 countries of four continents, in social networks, digital media complemented with formal events and / or virtual press in Bangkok, Johannesburg, London, São Paulo and Washington, DC and official announcements in the main newspapers of the world.
The organization invites people to follow the English hashtags: #VaccinateOurWorld and #VOWnow; Spanish: #VacunarNuestroMundo; Portuguese: #VacunaNossoMundo; French: #VaccinateNotreMonde on Twitter and share the campaign through the official site: www.VaccinateOurWorld.org
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.5 million clients in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare
US MEDIA CONTACT:
Ged Kenslea,
Senior Director,
Communications, AHF
+1.323.791.5526 cell
CONTACTO DE MEDIOS PARA AMÉRICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE:
Sergio Lagarde Moguel
Marketing & PR Director
+521 55 5419 08 76
email: [email protected]