We need to close the vaccination gap between advanced economies and developing countries to avoid what the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu has called “vaccination apartheid”. Therefore, we need global multilateral action to increase the production of vaccines and accelerate the roll-out worldwide. It is now also the path defined by the G20 leaders at the Global Health Summit in Rome on May 21. If the vaccination gap persists, it risks reversing the trend in recent decades of declining poverty and global inequalities. Our common global COVID-19 vaccine action to close the vaccination gap must be the first step toward genuine global health cooperation, as foreseen by the Rome Declaration recently adopted at the Global Health Summit.

Source: The Hindu June 02, 2021 18:22 UTC