The Board of Directors, World Bank have approved an additional $400m for covid-19 vaccines acquisition and deployment in Nigeria.
According to the bank, it had deployed over $157 billion to fight the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, the fastest and largest crisis response in its history.
World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Mr. Shubham Chaudhuri, said:
” As the Nigerian Government continues to tackle the effect of a third wave of the global pandemic, it is crucial it continues to vaccinate its citizens in addition to the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to avoid the dreadful consequences of another lockdown that left in its wake an economic toll the country is still grappling with.”
He said, “This additional funding would ensure that the Nigerian Government has the necessary financial resources to keep its vaccination drive going. This would mean that Nigerians will have increased access to the COVID-19 vaccination.”
This additional financing will allow Nigeria to purchase and deploy COVID-19 vaccines, strengthen relevant health systems that are necessary for a successful deployment, and prepare for future health emergencies.
Critically, it will permit the acquisition of vaccines to support Nigeria’s objective to have access to vaccines under the right conditions (of value-for-money, regulatory approvals, and delivery time among other important features).
This will ensure that the government meets its plans to vaccinate 51 percent of its population in two years.
Also speaking, Ayodeji Gafar Ajiboye, World Bank Task Team Leader for the project stated that;
“Recognising that there is currently excess demand for vaccines from both high-income and lower-income countries, the additional funds would let Nigeria acquire the vaccine at the earliest, strengthen the capacity of all states and the Federal Capital Territory to deploy the vaccines, as well as strengthen the country’s health system interventions such as enhancing health-emergency response capacity of health workers, cold chain equipment, disease surveillance, data management and use, and laboratory testing for the long-term.”
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