The World Health Organisation ( WHO), has allocated 320,000 Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use in four countries in Africa.
The benefitting countries are South Africa, Tunisia,Cape Verde and Rwanda.
The Organization posted on its website that the choice of the countries followed their capacity to store,distribute doses at minus 70 degrees celsius.
WHO however, disclosed plan by the Joint UN led COVAX initiative to start shipment of about 90million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Africa in February.
WHO regional Director for Africa,Matshidiso Moeti said the deployment was “a critical first step to ensuring that the continent gets equitable access to vaccines.”
The Public Health Specialist urged African countries to”ramp up readiness and finalize their national vaccine development plans Regulatory processes, cold chair systems and distribution plans need to be in place to ensure vaccines are safely expedited from ports of entry to delivery adding we can’t afford to waste a single dose”
Nigeria plans to take delivery of its first COVAX vaccine shipment in February although it earlier assured the citizens of the arrival of 100,000 doses of vaccines by the end of January 2021.
Nigera also plans to shore up Covid-19 vaccines doses through suport from Russia and India.
