A health worker administers a Covid-19 vaccine to a woman in Johannesburg, South Africa, December 4, 2021.
Sumaya Hisham | Reuters
Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti are the least vaccinated countries in the world against Covid-19, the data shows.
According to statistics from Our World in Data, only 0.05% of the population of Burundi has received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 0.4% of the population received at least one dose of the drug, while in Haiti, this proportion of the population increased to about 1%.
In low-income countries, only 5.5 percent of people are fully immunized against the coronavirus, according to Our World in Data. In high-income countries, 72% of the population is fully vaccinated with at least two doses.
Countries where unrest and civil strife are raging are also some of the least immunized in the world, with violent wars making vaccines difficult to reach their general populations.
In Yemen, where civil war broke out in 2014, less than 2% of the population has been vaccinated against Covid. South Sudan, where disputes over power-sharing remain rife even after the civil war officially ended in 2018, also has a vaccination rate around 2%.
Many African countries with low vaccination rates, including Chad, Madagascar and Tanzania, have vaccination rates between 1.5% and 4%.
South Africa, where a highly transmissible strain of the omicron virus was first identified last year, has vaccinated less than a third of the population.
Meanwhile, less than a third of people in Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have been vaccinated against Covid.
In October, WHO set a target for countries to vaccinate 70% of the population by mid-2022, but Many countries are lagging. Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: Covid may no longer be a global health emergency by 2022 if certain actions – including ensuring equitable access to vaccines – have been taken.
Mesfin Teklu Tessema, senior medical director of humanitarian relief organization International Rescue Committee, told CNBC that vaccine inequality “only prolongs the pandemic.”
“Every infection increases the risk of serious illness and hospitalization for the most vulnerable, as well as genetic mutations and thus the potential for new variants,” he said by email. .
“To save lives and protect an overwhelmed health system, we need to build a global wall of immunity through vaccination. To do so, we must prioritize access to refugees and others are in humanitarian crisis, who live out of reach of government services.”
