So far, 115,000 health and care workers have died from Covid-19 since the first case detected, according to updated figures from the World Health Organization.
WHO said on Monday that at least 115,000 health workers have died from Covid. Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the opening of the WHOs main annual assembly talked about the sacrifices made by health workers around the world to battle the pandemic.
“For almost 18 months, healthcare workers all over the world have stood in the breach between life and death,” he added, “They have saved countless lives and fought for others who, despite their best efforts, slipped away.”
“Many have themselves become infected, and while reporting is scant, we estimate that at least 115,000 health and care workers have paid the ultimate price in the service of others.”
He went on to say that many health care workers have since the beginning of the pandemic felt “frustrated, helpless and unprotected, with a lack of access to personal protective equipment and vaccines.”
And they are not alone. He described the overall inequity in access to vaccines as “scandalous”, warning it was “perpetuating the pandemic.”
However, 75 percent of all Covid-19 vaccines have gone to just 10 countries.
WHO urged to share vaccination stock with other countries
“The number of doses administered globally so far would have been enough to cover all health workers and older people if they had been distributed equitably,” he said.
Read more: Pfizer allocates 2 billion vaccine doses to poorer countries through COVAX
“There is no diplomatic way to say it: that small group of countries that make and buy the majority of the world’s vaccines control the fate of the rest of the world.” He made a request to countries that have large stocks of vaccines to share them, and greater collaboration to scale up development and distribution of the jabs.
He concluded, “Today, I’m calling on member states to support a massive push to vaccinate at least 10 percent of the population of every country by September.”
