By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has said on Thursday that it is necessary to diversify vaccine manufacturing and to have more production taking place in Africa and also in Latin America to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told European Union legislators that normal market forces for exports and imports couldn’t apply when it comes to the life-or-death issue of COVID-19 vaccines, as many of the world’s wealthiest nations were hoarding the shots for their own populations.
She said the world has the capacity to manufacture some five billion vaccine doses overall, but that as the virus has spread “we require twice and three times that. So the capacity was not there.”
One of the main challenges is diversifying vaccine production, which is now 80 percent concentrated in 10 European, North American and South Asian nations, Okonjo-Iweala said.
“It’s not normal that Africa, with 1.3 billion people, has 0.17 percent of the manufacturing capacity of the world,” she said. “So this has to change.” She added that Latin America has about 2 percent of global production capacity.
The summit set for Friday, co-hosted by the European Union’s executive arm and Italy, is expected to draw the Group of 20 industrial and emerging-market nations, the heads of international organisations and representatives of global health bodies.