World News | South Africa to Donate over 2 Mn Covid Vaccines to Other African Countries

Johannesburg, Dec 17 (PTI) South Africa will donate over two million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to other African countries, the government said on Friday.

“This donation embodies South Africa's solidarity with our brothers and sisters on the continent, with whom we are united in fighting an unprecedented threat to public health and economic prosperity," President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.

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“The only way in which we can prevent COVID-19 transmission and to protect economies and societies on our continent, is to successfully immunise a critical mass of the African population with safe and effective vaccines,” he said.

Ramaphosa, who has been championing the fight against vaccine inequity, had earlier accused richer nations of hoarding vaccines.

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The South African government has signed an agreement with the African Vaccination Acquisition Trust (AVAT) to donate the 2,030,400 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines worth R 288.6 million to African countries through the African Renaissance Fund (ARF).

The vaccines, which will be produced at the Aspen Pharma manufacturing plant at Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, will be made available to African countries through African Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP) over the next year.

The donation comes at a time when the poorer Africa nations are struggling to vaccinate enough citizens as the Omicron variant is tightening its grip in the continent.

South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Dr Naledi Pandor said that South Africa had initiated a coordinated African response that focused on addressing immediate challenges to public health systems and mitigating the economic and humanitarian crisis arising from the pandemic.

This included establishing a COVID-19 Response Fund and launching AMSP to ensure all countries had access to the necessary equipment and supplies.

African Union Special Envoy Strive Masiyiwa said "this generous donation from the people of South Africa” would be distributed directly to the lowest income member states as quickly as possible.

Masiyiwa said AVAT had already received and distributed over 100 million doses of donated vaccines.

“Most of (these) came as a result of President Ramaphosa's tireless efforts with the richest nations like the US, France and the EU. In addition, AVAT has entered into direct purchase of over 500 million doses, mostly produced in South Africa,” he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)