“Too many lives have been lost. Families, communities and nations have been devastated. … Our marathon effort has been a success, but the last mile may be the most difficult path.”
Progress against the disease is limited largely because only 2% of people in the developing world have been vaccinated against COVID-19. At the same time, the rest of our health systems have been fundamentally disrupted. UNICEF and the World Health Organization have reported that disruptions in routine immunization have seen 23 million children missing standard vaccinations in 2020-21, the highest in a decade.All of this means that most of our work to solve this pandemic is in front of us.
More striking, we do not have the syringes to vaccinate the world. Current estimates are that we will be at least 5 billion syringes short across the life of the COVID vaccination campaign. In 1999, a joint policy from WHO, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund called on all partners to finance “not only the vaccines, but the safe administration of the vaccines.”
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