Categories: News

COVID-19: WHO Denies Nigeria Access To Free Vaccine Over Poor Power Supply

World Health Organisation has removed Nigeria from the list of countries eeligible for its global COVAX scheme, which provides free coronavirus vaccines to member countries.

The global health organisation said Nigeria didn’t meet the requirements needed to be eligible for the scheme.

One of the criteria includes the ability to keep the vaccines frozen. Africa’s largest economy would, therefore, not be getting supplies until WHO’s requirements have been fully met to avoid vaccine loss or damages.

Nigerian authorities had impatiently depend on handouts from the WHO-funded COVAX programme, anticipating the delivery of a shipment of 100,000 Pfizer jabs last month.

Following stalled arrival of the vaccines, administration officials had blamed “politics” and “logistics due to no fault of Nigeria” for the delay.

Humanitarian information portal ReliefWeb reported WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, to have said at a virtual press briefing Thursday that only Cape Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia were qualified to take delivery of the inoculation, out of 13 countries that applied from the continent.

Moeti anchored the suspension of Nigeria and eight other African nations on inadequate storage facilities, which she said, posed a high proclivity for wastage of the jabs.

“This vaccine has received WHO Emergency Use Listing but requires countries to be able to store and distribute doses at minus 70 degrees Celsius,” she noted.

The WHO official added: “Regulatory processes, cold chain systems and distribution plans need to be in place to ensure vaccines are safely expedited from ports of entry to delivery. We can’t afford to waste a single dose.”