Poor nations rejected more than 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the global programme COVAX in December 2021, mainly due to their rapid expiry date, UNICEF has disclosed .
Despite growing supplies of shots, the world is still a long way off being vaccinated, with COVAX getting closer to delivering one billion doses to a total of nearly 150 countries, a UN official stressed.
“More than a 100 million have been rejected just in December alone,” Reuters quoted the Director of Supply Division at UN agency, UNICEF, Etleva Kadilli, to have told lawmakers at the European UnionParliament.
The main reason for rejection was the delivery of doses with a short shelf-life, she said.
The UNICEF official revealed how in Nigeria, the federal government destroyed expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 injections totalling 1,066,214 doses. Addressing journalists shortly before setting out to destroy the vaccines at the Idu Dump site in the Federal Capital Territory, the…
Source: Linda Ikeji
