Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Hello to everybody and welcome to my fellow panellists and to all of our colleagues in the media and to everybody who is watching us online.
We will be focusing today on Africa’s progress in rolling out the COVID-19 vaccines, now that we are 100 days into 2021.
It’s a great pleasure to welcome Dr Abdelhakim Yahyane, the Director of Population at Morocco’s Ministry of Health. Morocco has administered more COVID-19 vaccine doses than any other African country, and we will be very happy to hear more from Dr Yahyane how this impressive progress has been achieved.
I’m also very pleased to be joined by and to welcome my colleague and dear brother, Mr Mohamed Malick Fall, who is the UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa. UNICEF are a key partner working with us through the COVAX Facility to procure and ship vaccines to countries and of course we work together on other critical areas of health.
There have now been around 4.3 million COVID-19 cases on the African continent and 114,000 people have sadly died. For the past two months, we have seen a plateau of around 75,000 new cases per week, with a slight decrease in cases in the past week, of 6.7 per cent, compared to the previous seven days. Kenya in particular is experiencing a third wave and the epidemic is trending upwards in 14 other countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, Tunisia, Mali, Eritrea and Rwanda.
Vaccination is a life-saving tool in the response to the pandemic and 100 days into the year, of more than 600 million vaccine doses distributed globally, Africa has administered only 2%. More than one billion Africans remain on the margins of this historic march to end this pandemic.
African countries like Ghana, Rwanda and Angola have delivered a significant proportion of their vaccines within a short space of time and some of their success factors include training staff in advance, simulation exercises, pre-listing priority groups, and communicating early with communities. Sensitization efforts for example, have been key in managing vaccine hesitancy among older people as well as vaccine eagerness among young people, in the context of limited supplies.
However, 10 African countries that have carried out the most vaccinations have now used up over two-thirds of their supplies that they’ve received.
At the same time, countries such as Benin, Comoros, Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan have faced delays in rolling out vaccines, due to constraints around funding, planning and human resource shortages.
Operational challenges related to limited preparation to target priority groups and insufficient microplanning are providing lessons for subsequent rounds of vaccination. We are leaning that early planning is imperative, along with pro-active communication, ensuring that funds are available at the operational level, organized handling of data, and use of vaccination cards to track the doses administered as well as any adverse events.
As WHO we are working with partners to support countries in addressing these challenges, including supporting their microplanning, advocating for additional resources, putting in place effective communication strategies, and improving reporting of real-time data.
Delays in COVAX shipments are expected to continue this month unfortunately, as India is fighting a severe second wave of COVID-19 and has temporarily banned vaccine exports.
Despite supply challenges, we are expecting COVAX deliveries in the coming weeks to Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Comoros.
Countries affected by the delays have received WHO guidance to optimize the national deployment of the available doses.
Manufacturers along with WHO, Africa CDC, African countries, development partners and the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative are working hard to sustainably scale-up vaccine production, but we recognize that this cannot be achieved overnight.
Short-term solutions are needed that prioritize vaccine equity and Africa is already playing COVID-19 vaccination catch-up. While we acknowledge the immense burden placed by the global demand for vaccines, inequity can only worsen scarcity.
I understand that people may be concerned by the European Medicines Agency announcement yesterday of a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and unusual blood clots with low platelets.
While concerning, the events under assessment are very rare, we’d like to emphasize. Almost 200 million individuals have received this vaccine around the world and cases of blood clots and low platelets are extremely low, with less than 100 events reviewed in Europe.
Nevertheless, this matter deserves close and continuous analysis and WHO continues to gather and review data on this vaccine, while carefully monitoring the rollout of all COVID-19 vaccines. Based on current information, WHO considers that the benefits of using the vaccines greatly outweigh the risks and that countries in Africa should continue to vaccinate people with the AstraZeneca vaccine while we continue to analyse the data and to update, through our expert committees, the recommendations and provide advice to countries accordingly.
Finally, yesterday was World Health Day, also known as WHO’s birthday, and we celebrated by calling on everyone to contribute to building a fairer, healthier world. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically illustrated how important it is to address gaps and inequities in access to preventive interventions and good quality health care, for everyone, everywhere.
One of the clearest ways to progress towards fairness is by supporting equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. This means ensuring that priority groups are first in line for vaccines at the national level and working together with international solidarity to ensure vaccines reach every country. I’d like to emphasize that this also means that countries that have got surplus doses, mainly high-income countries, should act on their indication in the past in statements and share the vaccine supplies with other countries. It’s only by doing this sharing that we will reduce the risks, we will reduce the emergence of various variants and that we will manifest global solidarity.
So, I thank you again for joining this conversation and I very much look forward to our conversation with my other panellists and members of the media. Thank you.