By Elizabeth Piper, LONDON UK
British and Italian
leaders must hold an emergency summit before the U.N. General Assembly to end
vaccine inequality and send more shots to Africa and other low-income nations,
former British prime minister Gordon Brown said.Former British prime minister Gordon Brown
Brown, prime minister
between 2007 and 2010, has been leading a push for richer countries to share
more of the cost of vaccinating people in developing countries, many of which
have low inoculation rates and rising cases.
He appealed to U.S.
President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Italian Prime
Minister Mario Draghi, chair of the Group of 20 wealthy nations, to hold the
summit before September when world leaders will take part in the U.N.'s General
Assembly.
He called for the
leaders to end the "stranglehold" on vaccines of rich nations with
excess supply, and for them to help Africa and other low-income countries with
finance and logistics.
"Their leadership can ensure finance to build African manufacturing capacity for the longer term and unblock the barriers to African purchases of vaccines now and over the next year," Brown said in a statement on Monday.
"Only intervention
at the highest level by Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the current chair of
the G20, Mario Draghi, at a global vaccine summit in the next month can end
this vaccine inequality that shames the world."
The leaders of the
Group of Seven advanced economies - the United States, Britain, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy and Japan - agreed in June to provide 1 billion doses to poorer
countries by the end of 2022.
But Brown said most of
those would not be delivered to Africa, where less than 2% of people have been
fully vaccinated, until next year.
"The biggest
threat we all face comes from COVID spreading and mutating uninhibited in poor
unvaccinated countries," he said.
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