United Nations: The president of the UN General Assembly is warning that a vaccine for COVID-19 must be made available to everyone who needs it because if just one country is left out the world will still face a crisis from the coronavirus.
As the world looks to a vaccine and a post-COVID-19 world, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande also says that “inclusion is key, because without inclusion the suffering of those who are already left behind, will continue — and we cannot guarantee peace in that kind of a context.”
He said in an interview on Thursday with The Associated Press that statements from those developing vaccines have said they intend to make them widely available, which he stressed is important.
“I believe that there will be protocols and agreements to guarantee affordability and accessibility to the product when it is available,” he said. Muhammad-Bande said the pandemic, perhaps ironically, has defied initial predictions that developing countries would be hardest hit because many of their health systems are poorer. What has happened, he said, is that death rates and infections are far lower in percentage terms in developing countries, including in Africa, than in the major developed countries of the world.
“The point that is absolutely fundamental, both in rich and poor countries, developed and developing countries, (is that) it mattered how you responded to the disease, whether you are poor or rich,” Muhammad-Bande said. In dealing with the virus, he said, richer countries had better health care and financial support while developing countries reliant on tourism and oil, for example, are suffering from severe economic hardships.
“Go to each country, see how the pandemic affected differentially rich and poor people,” he said.
“This is the big issue and it has to be addressed.” Asked what needs to be done most urgently to return the world to some sense of normality, he said, “Solidarity and partnership and empathy for the other I think are key to how we go forward.” (AP)
