translated from Spanish: WHO, IMF and World Bank call on pharmaceutical companies to improve access to Covid vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today called on manufacturers of covid vaccines to take measures to facilitate developing countries’ access to a greater number of doses. The request, made at a meeting of directors of these pharmaceutical companies with the heads of these four organizations, comes days before the high-level meeting to be held at the UN General Assembly in New York to also discuss more universal access to these vaccines. The leaders of the four organizations today expressed their concern that the goal of vaccinating at least 40% of the world’s population against COVID-19 this year, set by the WHO, and considered by this body vital to overcome the pandemic and move towards economic recovery, cannot be achieved. Although the initial bottlenecks in vaccine production have already been overcome and pharmaceutical companies are now theoretically able to produce enough doses to meet demand, they are not yet reaching low- and middle-income countries, the organizations said in a joint statement. Therefore, they reiterate their call on countries with more advanced vaccination and large quantities of stored vaccines to accelerate their donations to COVAX, the program created by WHO and other agencies to redistribute vaccines more equitably. The organizations also call for greater transparency in the distribution of vaccines, the elimination of restrictions on the export of these types of drugs and their components, and a standardization of vaccines approved for use, if possible using the list managed by the WHO. It includes vaccines widely used in the West (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson) but also the Chinese ones of Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Original source in Spanish