WHO calls for funding and solidarity to combat Covid-19.
The UN Health Agency considers it the duty of rich countries to provide financial aid to end the pandemic.
247 - The World Health Organization (WHO) demanded on Wednesday (9) $16 billion from rich countries to end the Covid-19 pandemic as an emergency in 2022, reports Prensa Latina.
The funding directed to the Accelerated Access to Tools against Covid-19 (ACT-Accelerator) project would provide testing, treatments, vaccines, and personal protective equipment to low- and middle-income nations, the organization said in a statement.
The United Nations health organization indicated that since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 4,7 billion tests have been administered globally to detect the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
However, low-income countries used only about 22 million tests, representing 0,4% of the total number.
The WHO also warned that only 10% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine against the disease.
"This inequality not only costs lives, but harms economies and allows the risk of new and more dangerous variants to persist, which would deprive current tools of their effectiveness and delay even highly immunized populations for many months," the organization says.