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FG worried over COVID-19 vaccine financing, delivery
By Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor)
The federal government has called for transparency and support to address financing gaps and delivery difficulties associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Mrs. Zainab Ahmed is worried at the financing of COVID-19 vaccines for Africa and the approach to addressing vaccine access, delivery and uptake in the continent.
Zainab Ahmed has lamented that “the process has been difficult to navigate”.
Speaking at a virtual meeting recently, she raised issues on the modalities, saying: “what exactly are the existing mechanisms for countries to access? We have had bits and pieces of information. But to date, this has not been as coordinated as hoped.”
Giving the urgency required to administer the COVID-19 vaccines across the African continent , Zainab Ahmed noted that “there needs to be greater inclusion and involvement of Finance Ministers, as budgetary allocations need to be made and financing secured both locally and possibly internationally.”
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Ahmed argued that “access to vaccine financing should be simplified, and an act of global solidarity should be to support Finance Ministries with the necessary capacity required to complete what could often be a complex and laborious bureaucratic process”.
On her part, Nigeria’s finance minister has called “for proposals from banks on how countries could access finance mechanisms and support from other sources to help Ministries of Finance to easily and quickly apply for such funding.”
According to her, “funding needs to be flexible to support purchase or delivery (health systems) and possible corporate social responsibility (CSR) from banks.”
The participants were grateful for the over 20 percent COVAX donation to low and middle-income countries (LMICs), “but we need to fully protect our populations and also restart African economies. Therefore, 20 percent is not enough, and we must support African efforts to vaccinate at least 60 percent of our populations,” they said.
Participants want multilaterals, banks and bilateral partners to join hands “to ensure that we not only have vaccines, but are able to deliver all the way through to community level.”
With regards to vaccine delivery, participants welcomed the Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance (AVDA), which is expected to go some way in providing local solutions to meeting the gaps in logistics and delivery across the continent.
They argued that, “not all countries have the capacity to deliver even the donated vaccines”.
According to Zainab Ahmed, “COVID-19 is a multi-sectoral issue; it is a health crisis that has metamorphosed into an economic crisis and must be addressed with urgency collaboratively.”
