The World Health Association is suggesting that “rich nations” fork over $1.5 billion for vaccines to combat the H1N1 virus that, it suggests, could foment anarchy in the world’s poorest nations. From The Observer.
Health ministers around the globe were sent the warning on Thursday in a report on the costs of averting a humanitarian disaster in the next few months. It comes as officials inside the World Health Organisation, the UN’s public health body, said they feared they would not be able to raise half that amount because of the global downturn.
Gregory Hartl of WHO said the report required an urgent response from rich nations. “There needs to be recognition that the whole world is affected by this pandemic and the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We have seen how H1N1 has taken hold in richer nations and in the southern hemisphere. We have been given fair warning and must act soon,” he said.
The report was drawn up by UN officials over the last two months. It was commissioned in July after Ban ki-moon, the UN’s secretary general, expressed concern that the H1NI virus could have a severe impact on the world’s poorest countries.
Approximately $86 million
should be used to pay for the WHO and other UN-related organisations to help in these countries as well as an emergency fund for additional antiviral medicines, [the UN] argues.
