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High-Level Talking Africa-Europe Debate on Addressing the Vaccine Challenge for a Renewed Africa-Europe partnership
This debate on Addressing the vaccine challenge will touch upon not only the need for effective vaccine equity, only way to ensure a fully efficient fight against the current pandemic, but also the development of local vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa.
Only seven out of 54 African countries have reached the 2021 year-end WHO target of fully vaccinating 40% of their people, compared to 26 out of the 27 EU countries.
More than one year after the launch of the global vaccination campaign and just two weeks before the EU-African Union summit, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to heavily impact health systems, economies and the day to day lives of citizens in both Africa and Europe.
As of 26/1/2022, cumulative report COVID-19 cases per 1 million population are nearly 25 times higher in the European Union (EU) than in Africa.
However, the impact of COVID-19 in Africa may be greatly under-estimated: according to World Health Organization (WHO), about only one in seven COVID-19 infections are being detected in Africa.
Only seven out of 54 African countries have reached the 2021 year-end WHO target of fully vaccinating 40% of their people, compared to 26 out of the 27 EU countries.