Between 80 000 and 180 000 health and care workers (HCWs) are estimated to have died from COVID between January 2020 and May 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
That grim estimate features in a new WHO working paper based on the 3.45 million coronavirus-related deaths reported globally to the UN health agency up to May. The WHO warns it may well be an underestimate of 60%. To highlight the need for better protection, WHO was joined by global partners working to end the pandemic, to issue an urgent call for concrete action on behalf of workers in the sector.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that “the backbone of every health system is its workforce.”
“COVID-19 is a powerful demonstration of just how much we rely on these men and women, and how vulnerable we all are when the people who protect our health are themselves unprotected”, he added.
WHO and partners said that besides the deaths, more and more HCWs are suffering from burnout, stress, anxiety and fatigue. They are urging equitable access to vaccines so that HCWs are prioritised.
By the end of last month, on average, two in five HCWs were fully vaccinated, but with considerable differences across regions.
“In Africa, less than one in ten health workers have been fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, in most high-income countries, more than 80% of health workers are fully vaccinated”, Dr Ghebreyesus pointed out.
For him, over 10 months since the approval of the first vaccines, “the fact that millions of health workers still haven’t been vaccinated is an indictment on the countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines”.
Currently, 82 nations risk missing the target of vaccinating 40% of their population by year end, and 75% of those countries are faced with insufficient supply. The remainder have some limitations that WHO is helping solve.
Speaking to journalists via videolink, Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister and currently WHO’s Ambassador for Global Health Financing, said it would be a “moral catastrophe of historic proportions” if G20 countries cannot act quickly.
These nations have pledged to donate more than 1.2 billion vaccine doses to COVAX. According to WHO, so far, only 150 million have been delivered.
With wealthy countries stockpiling millions of unused doses, close to expiration, Brown said they should start an “immediate, massive, concerted” airlift of vaccines to low income countries.
If they do not, he argued, they will be guilty of an “economic dereliction of duty that will shame us all.”
Brown also warned that “the longer vaccine inequity exists, the longer the virus will be present.”
Source: UN News
