IFRC Urges Wealthy Nations to Share Vaccines With Southeast Asia Leading in Death Tolls

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th August, 2021) The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on Wednesday called on affluent states to increase vaccine sharing with Southeast Asia, which has recently been suffering the world's highest mortality rates from the coronavirus, caused by the spread of the highly transmissible Delta strain.

Over the past two weeks, Southeastern Asia has confirmed a total of 38,552 COVID-19 fatalities, which is twice more than in North America, according to John Hopkins University.

While certain Western countries have fully vaccinated over half of their populations 60% in the UK and 64% in Canada and Spain Southeast Asian states are falling significantly behind behind.

Malaysia has fully vaccinated 34% of its citizens, Indonesia and Philippines around 11%, and Vietnam less than 2%, the organization said.

"In the short-term, we need much greater efforts by richer countries to urgently share their millions of excess vaccine doses with countries in Southeast Asia. We also need vaccine companies and governments to share technology and scale up production," Alexander Matheou, IFRC Asia Pacific Director, was quoted as saying by the statement.

The coming weeks will be crucial in the fight with coronavirus variants, which can only be won by scaling up vaccinations, treatment and testing, the organization said, adding that at least 70% people should be vaccinated in the region to curb the surge.