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2021 is destined to be a humanitarian catastrophe, and rich countries must not trample poor countries “in a vaccine race” to fight the pandemic, UN officials warned in the General Assembly.
The head of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, and the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoke during a special meeting on Covid-19, which appeared in China last year and infected 65 million people worldwide.
The pandemic, measures taken by countries to try to stop its spread and the economic impact have driven a 40 percent increase in the number of people in need of humanitarian aid, the United Nations said earlier this week. The organization requested $ 35 billion to fund the necessary aid, writes News.ro.
“2021 will be literally catastrophic based on what we see at this stage of the game,” Beasley said, adding that in a dozen countries, hunger was “knocking on the door.” He said 2021 will be likely “The worst year of humanitarian crisis since the founding of the United Nations”, 75 years ago, and the organization “It won’t be able to fund everything … so we have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs versus the Titanic.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and senior officials have also called for Covid-19 vaccines to be available to all and for rich countries to help developing countries fight the epidemic and recover.
Tedros called for an immediate injection of $ 4.3 billion in a global vaccine distribution program.
“We simply cannot accept a world where the poor and marginalized are trampled on by the rich and strong, under the impact of vaccines. This is a global crisis and solutions must be shared fairly as global public goods.”, Tedros also told the General Assembly.
