WHO pledges $112 million for COVID vaccines

The World Health Organization’s COVAX programme has pledged $112 million for COVID-19 vaccines to reach 20 percent of Afghanistan’s population, an Afghan health official said on Tuesday.

Speaking to journalists, the deputy health minister, Waheed Majroh, said it would take about six months to get the vaccines.

The COVAX programme is a global scheme to vaccinate people in poor and middle income countries against the coronavirus and aims to deliver at least two billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021 to cover 20 percent of the most vulnerable people in 91 poor and middle-income countries.

Reuters reported that aside from COVAX, the country has also received a pledge of 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India.

Dr Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, head of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation at Afghanistan’s health ministry told Reuters that the “AstraZeneca brand which is manufactured in India will arrive soon in Afghanistan.”

Nazari said government was only concerned about the WHO approval of the vaccine and that the pre-qualification process has already started.

Afghanistan has registered a total of 54,854 infections and 2,390 deaths – but experts say the actual numbers are much higher and are underreported due to low testing and limited access to medical facilities in the war torn country.