$23b Needed for Covid Vaccines, Medicine Around the World: WHO

Billions more are needed to supply the world's population with vaccines and medicines against Covid-19 up to September 2022.

The World Health Organization (WHO) put the need at $23.4 billion dollars in Geneva, news outlets said on Friday. This would prevent at least 5 million potential deaths and save the global economy more than $5.3 billion.

The uneven distribution of vaccines and medicines so far is preventing the coronavirus pandemic from ending soon, the WHO said. This increases the risk of new and more dangerous variants of the coronavirus developing, against which previous vaccines and medicines are not effective enough.

So far, only 0.5% of available vaccines have been used in the poorest countries, even though they make up 9% of the population, it said.

"If the 6.8 billion vaccine doses administered globally so far had been distributed equitably, we would have reached our 40% target in every country by now," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

According to the WHO Africa Office, only 10% of the 54 countries in the African region will reach the 40% target by the end of the year unless significantly more is done.

The money is to go into the ACT Accelerator. This is the program launched 18 months ago by the United Nations for global solutions around the coronavirus. ACT is short for "Access to Covid Tools."

It includes the COVAX vaccination program, as well as programs for Covid tests and medicines.

COVAX has delivered more than 425 million vaccine doses to 144 countries. The program has invested in vaccine research with deposits from rich countries, and in return, all countries have been able to purchase orders through COVAX.

Most rich countries met most of their vaccine needs through separate contracts with manufacturers. Therefore, there is not enough vaccine available for COVAX, the WHO criticizes.