COVID ‘Shot for All’, not a luxury, but development priority: UNDP 

Under the banner of A Shot for All, on the margins of the 76th league of the UN General Assembly, salient leaders and personalities stressed the value of vaccine equity and how to achieve universal access, particularly successful processing countries and marginalized communities successful Africa. 

For the UN agency, the goal is not a luxury, but an urgent planetary improvement priority.  

Development precedence for all 

"Delaying vaccines successful low-income countries and regions similar Africa cannot beryllium the mode forward. The stakes are simply excessively high. Ending vaccine inequality indispensable beryllium seen arsenic a planetary nationalist bully and improvement precedence for all," said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. 

The event, moderated by Al Jazeera English anchor, Folly Bah Thibault, represented a telephone to enactment to governments and improvement partners to reconsider the production, supply, distribution, and financing of vaccines and however to redress the interaction of the existent crisis. 

Speakers joined the planetary telephone to expedite and prioritize vaccine equity. For them, it’s not conscionable a mode to extremity the pandemic, but also a mode to boost the economical and societal opportunities that volition assistance processing countries, peculiarly successful Africa, to execute the Sustainable Development Goals.  

Multilateralism and solutions 

Among the speakers, were  the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,  Felix Antoine Tshisekedi, the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong.  

They agreed that multilateralism is central to ending the pandemic, and they outlined solutions to ensuring nary 1 is near behind. Among the proposals, were increased manufacturing of vaccines, unblocking vessel necks successful the proviso chain, and investing successful homegrown innovations and capacities.  

Speaking astatine the event, UNDP Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, Ahunna Eziakonwa, said “a two-track betterment is nary recovery, the satellite is calling for greater justice.” 

“We cannot bushed the pandemic if fractional of the satellite is experiencing vaccine famine. Delaying vaccines is denying development. We volition proceed to bash our utmost to springiness each African a changeable astatine beingness and let each African state to physique guardant smarter, stronger and much sustainably,” she added.  

Award-winning Nigerian singer Patoranking and Kenyan percussionist and activist Kasiva Mutua performed astatine the event, highlighting the interaction of the pandemic connected artists and their quality to animate action.  

Other participants included Edem Adzogenu from Afro Champions, Yvonne Mburu, CEO Nexakili and subordinate of France’s Presidential Council for Africa, Admassu Tadesse, Director of Trade Development Bank, and Kwabena Ayirebi, Director of Banking Operations for the Africa Export-Import Bank.