Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
The theme for the United Nation’s (UN) World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Day celebrations this year is Build a fairer, healthier world. For this purpose the WHO suggests:
- ·
Working
together
- ·
Collecting
reliable data
- ·
Tackling
inequities
- ·
Acting
beyond borders
A platform with amplified significance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting 131,487,572 people worldwide, as of April 6, 2021, with a global death toll of almost 3 million people (Who COVID 19 Dashboards).
The WHO COVID19 Dashboards are also posting figures on the status of the global COVID 19 vaccination campaign. As of April 5, 2021, 604,032,357 doses have been delivered. A figure that echoes the 2021 UN WHO World Health Day theme, as global vaccine distribution is also arising in the of midst distribution inequities. Inequities, unsurprising to experts at the UN, such as UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who perhaps best captured the already emerging controversies with the term vaccine apartheid (Byanyima, 2021; O'Neill, 2021).
In any
event, the observance of World Health Day, in the year 2021, feels more like a Get Well
World card, than a celebration of world health, especially when such a tiny
microorganism as the CoV2 has so cruelly robbed the world of one of its most powerful
tools for healing.
References
Byanyima, W. (Feb. 3, 2021) UNAIDS A global vaccine apartheid is unfolding. People’s lives must come before profit https://www.unaids.org/en/20210203_oped_guardian
O’Neill, J. (March 18, 2021) End vaccine apartheid by waiving patents and save us all from Covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/18/end-vaccine-apartheid-by-waiving-patents-and-save-us-all-from-covid-19
Touching through glass https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/hands-touching-through-glass?phrase=hands%20touching%20through%20glass&sort=mostpopular
UN WHO World Health Day https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2021
WHO Covid-19 Dashboard https://covid19.who.int/
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