G7 Pledge Of One Billion Vaccines Is Not Enough Say Critics

G7 pledge of one billion vaccines is not enough say critics. G7 leaders have committed to provide one billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries, but ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others have warned that is not enough and is a “moral failure” on the part of the G7 nations. The World Health Organisation says that 11 billion vaccines are needed globally.

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Sky News the lack of vaccines will lead to a divided world.

”When we needed 11 billion vaccines, we’ve only got offered a plan for one billion. I think this summit will also go down as an unforgivable moral failure, when the richest countries are sitting around the table with the power to do something about it,” he said on June 13.

“Now that we’ve discovered the vaccine, we have not delivered the comprehensive plan that will deliver vaccination by the middle of next year. We will have a huge problem of a division between the richest countries that are safe and the poorest countries that are not safe.

“But then the problem will come back to haunt the richest countries because we will have contagion spreading that will hurt even the people who are vaccinated because of mutations and variants,” he added.

At the G7 Summit in Cornwall, the UK and others said they would provide at least one billion coronavirus vaccine doses to the world through dose sharing and financing and set out a plan to expand vaccine manufacturing in order to achieve that goal.

The UK will donate five million doses by the end of September, beginning in the coming weeks, primarily for use in the world’s poorest countries. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also committed to donating a further 95 million doses within the next year, including 25 million more by the end of 2021.

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