Ankara (SONNA)-Turkey has been a strong healthcare champion in 2021, the World Health Organization chief said on Thursday, and added when the country produces a vaccine, it will help address “vaccine equity.”<\/p>\n
WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus was speaking at a twice-weekly COVID-19 webinar also addressed by Tukey’s Health Minister Dr. Fahrettin Koca; and Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister and recently named as a WHO Special Envoy.<\/p>\n
Both Tedros and Koca agreed on enabling vaccine production globally without making intellectual property rights an issue.<\/p>\n
“We believe that we will soon produce our own vaccine. Rest assured that your call upon vaccine-producing countries will be met with a clear response in Turkey,\u201d Koca said.<\/p>\n
“Our vaccine will definitely be offered for the use of the whole humanity. Right now, 100 countries do not have access to a COVID-19 vaccine which is why the vaccine to be produced in Turkey will be offered for the whole of humanity,” he added.
\nTedros, for his part, said: “I fully agree, local production is very, very important and WHO is ready to help countries. I think going forward, that vaccine equity could be addressed by increasing local and regional capacity in production.<\/p>\n
“And we have also been calling for intellectual property waiver to help expand the production capacity significantly,” said the WHO chief.<\/p>\n
At the World Trade Organization, India and South Africa have called for a waiver of Trade and Intellectual Property Rules (TRIPS) for COVID-19 vaccines but have not yet achieved consensus in the world trade body.
\nTedros and Koca also spoke in solidarity with healthcare workers.<\/p>\n
“This is the year of the health and care worker. And we know that even before the pandemic, there was a shortfall of at least 18 million health workers, and as we work to end the pandemic and recover together, health and care workers must come first.<\/p>\n
“We must ensure that they are trained, protected, and supported to do their job safely and effectively.<\/p>\n
@Anadolu Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ankara (SONNA)-Turkey has been a strong healthcare champion in 2021, the World Health Organization chief said on Thursday, and added when the country produces a vaccine, it will help address “vaccine equity.” WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus was speaking at a twice-weekly COVID-19 webinar also addressed by Tukey’s Health Minister Dr. Fahrettin Koca; and Carl Bildt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-404731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local","8":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404733,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404731\/revisions\/404733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}