Manuel Farinha / Lusa
Prime Minister António Costa
Portugal will “redirect” 5% of the vaccines acquired to Timor-Leste and Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP).
Prime Minister António Costa said this Tuesday that Africa will be a priority in the provision of additional doses of vaccines against covid-19 and that Portugal will seek to “redirect” 5% of acquired vaccines to Timor-Leste and Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP).
The positions were taken by António Costa in a pre-recorded intervention for an event promoted by Global Citizens, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that is launching a campaign to mobilize more funds for the global fight against covid-19 – a initiative supported by the European Commission.
In his brief speech, the executive leader considered that “support for international vaccination is essential for the eradication of the covid-19 pandemic” and defended the thesis that “no country in the world will be safe until everyone is safe“.
“In addition to funding the Covax Initiative, which aims to provide vaccines to 20% of the population of 92 countries, within the European Union we are working on a vaccine sharing mechanism that could provide additional doses of vaccines, Africa being naturally a priority ”, pointed out the Prime Minister of Portugal, country that presides until June to the Council of the European Union.
According to Costa, since the beginning of the pandemic, “more than 3.5 million of euros in means of prevention and combat, sending medical, protective, diagnostic and therapeutic material to the main countries partnering with cooperation – the African countries with Portuguese as an official language (PALOP) and East Timor ”.
“We will remain committed to this path, and we will endeavor to redirect 5% of the vaccines acquired by Portugal to our traditional cooperation partners, following up on local training and capacity building actions. In this case, we really depend on each other and, therefore, we really have to count on each other ”, he added.
On Monday, the United Nations (UN) announced that Cape Verde it will be one of the first African countries to receive vaccines against covid-19 through the international Covax platform, which aims to immunize 35% of the population.
Covax is a joint initiative of WHO and the Alliance for Access to Vaccines (GAVI) to provide vaccines against covid-19 to low- and middle-income countries.
According to the African Union’s Disease Control and Prevention Center (Africa CDC), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the African continent has so far recorded 3,830,631 cases of infection with the new coronavirus, including 101,350 deaths
