By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The World Health Organization, WHO, Representative in Nigeria Dr Walter Kazadi Mulomboo has denied rumours that Nigeria has been disqualified from access COVID 19 vaccines.
This was revealed today at a meeting held in Abuja, Mulumbo said, “WHO has not disqualified any country in Africa from accessing COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility, but rather is supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible.”
According to him, presently all African countries including Nigeria are expected to start accessing the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines by the end of February, stressing that the vaccine is under review by WHO for Emergency Use Listing and the outcome is expected soon.
Meanwhile out of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to African countries for the first phase, Nigeria has received by far the largest allocation, with 16 million doses, WHO revealed.
Explaining further , Mulumbo said that in addition to this Nigeria was among 18 countries considered to finally get an initial Pfizer doses.
On the Africa continent, as of the 18 January deadline, COVAX received 13 submissions and a multi-agency committee evaluated the proposals of which 9 were recommended as ready to deploy the Pfizer vaccine including Nigeria, the WHO representative explained
