The World Health Organisation (WHO) has clarified misleading reports claiming Nigeria was disqualified from accessing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti had said the organisation allocated 320,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to four African countries: Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia, excluding Nigeria.
Nigeria had submitted a proposal to be supplied the vaccine being donated by COVAX facility, the vaccine component of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
The WHO body has denied speculations suggesting Nigeria was disqualified from accessing the vaccine doses.
Moeti noted that the process of selecting the four countries was “challenging”, adding that “supplies were limited”.
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In a statement issued by WHO Country Representative in Nigeria Dr Walter Kazadi Mulomboo, he said the organisation has not disqualified any country in Africa from accessing COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility, but rather is supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible.
“Currently, all countries on the continent are expected to start accessing the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines by the end of February. The vaccine is under review by WHO for Emergency Use Listing and the outcome is expected soon,” he said.
Of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to African countries for the first phase, Mulomboo stated that Nigeria has received by far the largest allocation, with 16 million doses.
He stated that Nigeria’s proposal to access the vaccine doses was successful, but it was “not feasible” to spread the “limited doses” across all the 51 countries deemed “ready”. He noted that such move might not achieve the intended public health benefit.
“In addition to the Astra Zeneca doses, there is an initial limited volume of Pfizer vaccine available through COVAX,” the WHO boss said.
“Demand for the initial allocation of 1.2 million Pfizer doses was exceptionally high. COVAX received interest from 72 countries around the world, of which 51 countries were considered by the review committee as ‘ready’ (Nigeria was among these countries) and 18 countries in total were finally chosen to receive initial Pfizer doses.
“On the Africa continent, as of the 18 January deadline, COVAX received 13 submissions and a multi-agency committee evaluated the proposals of which 9 were recommended as ready to deploy the Pfizer vaccine including Nigeria.
“Unfortunately, it was not feasible to provide each of these 51 countries with Pfizer doses, due to a number of factors including the limited capacity for Pfizer to handle many countries at once. Therefore, spreading the limited doses across all the 51 countries deemed ‘ready’ could have not achieve the intended public health benefit.
“After epidemiological data was taken into account, the decision was taken to proportionally balance the number of self financing and AMC Participants, as well as Participants across all 6 WHO regions.”
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