Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday that a consignment of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccines under the Vaccine Maitri initiative is arriving in Somalia
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th March, 2021) Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday that a consignment of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccines under the Vaccine Maitri initiative is arriving in Somalia.
"Reaching across the Indian Ocean. Made in India vaccines arriving in Somalia. #VaccineMaitri," Jaishankar wrote on Twitter.
This comes after Somalian Health Minister Fawziya Abikar on Monday warned that the COVID-19 situation in the country is "dire" and called for strict adherence to health measures in fighting the disease.
India's Vaccine Maitri initiative was launched on January 20 with the aim to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to countries in need. According to Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava, the country has already delivered hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses both through grants and on a commercial basis.
Made-in-India vaccines have already been received by 25 nations across the world and 49 more countries will be supplied in the coming days, the ANI news outlet reported. Srivastava said that the Vaccine Maitri initiative has been guided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement that India's delivery and production capacity will be used for the benefit of mankind.
The deliveries under the Vaccine Maitri consignment include shots created by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII), which has received territorial rights to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for domestic use and distribution to countries in Africa and Latin America.
