Small Island nations lacking access to basic medical equipment and supplies fear that once therapeutics and vaccines against the coronavirus are developed, they will not receive these drugs and vaccines, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said on Friday at a virtual briefing during the launch of the COVID-19 technology sharing pool
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2020) Small Island nations lacking access to basic medical equipment and supplies fear that once therapeutics and vaccines against the coronavirus are developed, they will not receive these drugs and vaccines, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said on Friday at a virtual briefing during the launch of the COVID-19 technology sharing pool.
"In the small island developing states, we have stories enough to tell about lack of access to basic medical equipment, medical supplies, and we fear that when the therapeutics and the vaccines come, unless we assert the right of the multilateral institutions of our world to create fairness, to reinforce transparency and accountability that we need, then we are not going to fulfill the promise of the United Nations and the corresponding institutions that came out of the 1945 pact that allowed the world to have a new order," Mottley said.
According to the prime minister, access to the latest products aimed at treating COVID-19 patients and preventing the further spread of the virus must not create winners and losers, and "small states, who are often the casualties of market conditions, cannot be dispensable in the wake of this disease."
To avoid such scenarios, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Costa Rica launched earlier in the day the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP. Thirty-seven nations and multiple international partners have joined the initiative, which aims at sharing vaccines, tests, treatments and other health technologies to overcome the pandemic. The health technology depository will be voluntary, while serving as sister initiative to the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator launched by WHO in late April.
