Sun 26 September 2021:
In a video aired during the Global Citizen concert in Paris on Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron committed to double the amount of vaccine doses sent to poorer countries to 120 million.
“The injustice is that in other continents, obviously, vaccination is very late…,” he said. “We have to go faster, stronger.
“France pledges to double the number of doses it is giving,” he added. “We will pass from 60 million to 120 million doses offered.”
On Wednesday, the United States announced that it would be doubling its donation of vaccine doses, bringing its total contribution to 1.1 billion.
President Joe Biden described the pandemic as an “all-hands-on-deck crisis”, adding “we need other high income countries to deliver on their own ambitions”.
500 million doses have been pledged by the European Union.
In a video message to the United Nations on Tuesday, China’s President Xi Jingping vowed a total of two billion doses by the end of the year, repeating a figure earlier offered by Chinese authorities.
The World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has repeatedly decried the inequity of the large disparity in vaccine dose distribution between rich and poor countries.
“I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” he said earlier this month.
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