Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Good morning, good afternoon, bonjour and thank you all for having joined us today to talk about COVID-19 vaccine readiness in the African Region.
A warm hello and welcome to colleagues and friends. I hope Helen will be joining us soon, Professor Helen Rees but hello to Professor Pontiano Kaleebu, and Professor Fredrick Were. Thank you so much for having taken the time to join this conversation today.
With three COVID-19 vaccine candidates demonstrating high levels of efficacy, many countries are keen and determined to get the vaccine on time. We do know that African countries are concerned and hoping that pre-ordering of millions of doses of vaccines by wealthy countries will not disadvantage their accessing supplies. I think this is very much the issue of today that’s been discussed all over, especially in the Region.
Vaccination, in combination with tried and tested public health measures, will help end this pandemic.
And as the COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out in phases it will turn into the biggest vaccination drive in the history of the continent, and indeed the history of the world.
At WHO we are working with countries and partners to prepare for this unprecedented initiative and 40 African countries (we have 47 countries in our Region) have shared data with us assessing their readiness. So, we sent them a readiness assessment tool and I am really glad that most countries have relatively quickly started to use it and provide us with the data. And what we see is that the average readiness score is 33%, which is well below the desired benchmark of 80%.
So, we are doubling down on planning and preparation because this will make or break this unprecedented endeavour.
In our Region we are assisting countries to develop their COVID-19 vaccine introduction plans, including by leveraging our vast network of polio and immunization and other public health staff on the ground under the leadership of our WHO representatives. So, we have physical presence in all the countries in the Region and these teams have started to work hard on this and I had the opportunity to brief all the Ministers of Health when we had a meeting with them two days ago.
We know that communities have played an incredibly important and central role in stopping the spread of COVID-19 and they will be central in the roll out of the vaccines. It is critical that authorities reach out to communities, listen to their concerns and give people a voice in the process of developing and implementing the delivery strategies. It’s also critical to fight against false anti-vaccine information.
So, here I’d like to ask for your help, dear colleagues, journalists, to make sure that in the coming months the vaccine narrative continually emphasizes equity. We promised Africa’s Ministers of Health to do all that we can to ensure countries in the Region are not left behind in the race to deploy vaccines and I ask for your support on this. There are also key logistical and financing gaps where international solidarity will be imperative.
The promise of vaccines comes as Africa reports more than 2.1 million COVID-19 cases and 50,000 people have sadly lost their lives.
We’ve had a plateauing of the number of new cases per day, but we are starting to see an uptick and that gives us a lot of concern.
Countries in the northern hemisphere, including in North Africa, are reporting high daily cases as they move into their colder months. This is similar to what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic.
And as I was saying, here in the Region, the curve is once again trending upwards a little bit as we head into the holiday season when people will travel. It is vital, therefore that we continue practicing the preventive measures and that scaled-up, proactive public health capacities are in place to flatten the rise in cases.
At WHO we are working with UN agencies and other partners at country level, to provide support in this endeavour, including around the response to the pandemic and providing essential services for health because we don’t want this to suffer as we focus on COVID-19.
So, I look very much forward to our conversation today and I thank you all for having joined us.