“The pandemic and the associated global recession are about to wreak havoc in fragile, low-income countries. The response by rich nations so far has been extremely inadequate and dangerously myopic,” said Mark Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs, in a statement released Thursday.
To date, more than 13.7 million people have contracted the virus worldwide, resulting in nearly 590,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
While the virus has changed lives in parts of Europe and North America, many emerging and developing nations are also struggling to contain an upward trend in the number of cases. Four of the five BRICS countries, the acronym used to describe the top five emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have registered more than 300,000 cases, with the sole exception of China, where the virus originated.
Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa have registered the second, third, fourth and sixth cases of the majority of the countries of the world, respectively.
“Failure to act now will free the virus to roam around the world, undo decades of development and create tragic, exportable problems for a generation,” Lowcock said.
According to the UN, at the current rate, the pandemic and the global economic crisis linked to it could trigger the first increase in global poverty in 30 years and “bring 265 million people to the point of starvation by the end of the year.”
Lowcock said it would cost $ 90 billion to protect the world’s poorest 10% from the twin economic and health crises facing the world. While that may seem like a lot of money, Lowcock said it represents “less than 1% of the stimulus package that rich countries have implemented to protect their own economies.”
“This is a problem that can be solved with money from wealthy nations and new ideas from shareholders of international financial institutions and supporters of UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and NGO, “he said. “It does not have to be this way”.
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