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Debunking earlier rumour that Nigeria had been disqualified in its COVID-19 vaccines request bid, the World Health Organisation in Abuja on Saturday said it had not disqualified any African country from accessing COVID – 19 vaccines through the COVAX facility.
The organisation said while it was supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible , Nigeria has received the largest allocation with 16 million doses out of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to Africa for the first phase.
The WHO Country Representative in Nigeria , Dr Walter Kazadi Mulomboo , made the clarification during a joint press conference with the Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency , Dr. Faisal Shuaib , on the purported disqualification of Nigeria from access to the COVID – 19 vaccines .
According to him, “WHO 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 . Of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to African countries for the first phase , Nigeria has received by far the largest allocation , with 16 million doses.
“In addition to the Astra Zeneca doses, there is an initial limited volume of Pfizer vaccine available through COVAX . 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 achieved 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.”
Shuaib said the clarification was imperative “in order to ensure that just a few of us do not bring our country to ridicule .”
Fatimah Oyesanmi
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