Côte d'Ivoire received 504,000 doses of vaccine against Covid-19 on Friday, the first to arrive in this West African country, funded by the Covax device intended in particular for disadvantaged countries, noted journalists from AFP.
Read also: The AstraZeneca vaccine would be very effective in the elderly
These doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine arrived at Abidjan international airport aboard an Emirates airline chartered by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
"
The vaccines we received today will allow us to contain the pandemic and strengthen the health of our population,
" said Ivorian Minister of Health Aka Aouele, present at the airport, adding that the vaccinations will begin on Monday. in his country.
Côte d'Ivoire, a country of 25 million inhabitants, recorded more than 32,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Friday and nearly 190 deaths.
The figures have been increasing for several weeks, but apart from the obligation to wear a mask in closed places and the encouragement to respect barrier gestures, no other restrictive measure has been imposed for the moment.
With neighboring Ghana which received 600,000 doses on Wednesday, Côte d'Ivoire is one of the first countries to benefit from vaccines funded by the Covax system aimed at providing anti-Covid vaccines to 20% of the population this year. from 200 participating countries and territories.
It includes a financing mechanism that allows 92 nations with a low or medium level of economic development to have access to precious doses and was put in place to try to prevent rich countries from monopolizing all the resources. vaccines.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) welcomed the arrival of these vaccines in Africa, but however accused on Monday some rich countries of "
undermining
" the Covax device and of "
approaching the manufacturers to ensure access to additional vaccine doses
”.
The delivery of vaccine doses to Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana comes after the launch of the vaccination campaign in Senegal on Tuesday, following South Africa, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Mauritius, from Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt.
To help speed up the vaccination of 1.3 billion Africans, the African Union (AU) said it had secured 270 million doses of Covid vaccine to distribute this year.