COVID-19 Kill 180,000 Health Workers – WHO Reveals

COVID-19 Kill 180,000 Health Workers – WHO Reveals

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed that at least one in ten medical personnel have been fully vaccinated in Africa.

According to the agency of the United Nations which is responsible for international public health, more than 80 per cent of health workers in high-income countries have also been fully vaccinated.

This is as the health agency lamented that between 80,000 and 180,000 medical personnel may have died from the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic globally between January of 2020 and May 2021.

Ezenwoko’s Blog reports that WHO gave the estimate in a new working paper titled: “The impact of COVID-19 on health and care workers: a closer look at deaths’’ based on the 3.45 million coronavirus-related deaths reported globally.

The reported statistics according to WHO, might well be at least 60 per cent lower than the actual number of victims. To highlight the need for better protection, WHO on Thursday, was joined by global partners working to end the pandemic, to issue an urgent call for concrete action on behalf of workers in the sector.

Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, reiterated that “the backbone of every health system is its workforce.

He said: “COVID-19 is a powerful demonstration of just how much we rely on these men and women, and how vulnerable we all are when the people who protect our health are themselves unprotected.”

WHO and partners said that apart from huge concern over deaths, an increasing proportion of the workforce continued to suffer from burnout, stress, anxiety and fatigue. The health agency is calling on leaders and policymakers to ensure equitable access to vaccines so that health and care workers are prioritised.

By the end of September, on average, two in five of these workers are fully vaccinated, but with a considerable difference across regions.

WHO chief noted: “In Africa, less than one in ten health workers have been fully vaccinated while in most high-income countries, more than 80 per cent of health workers are fully vaccinated.”

According to Ghebreyesus, “the fact that millions of health workers still haven’t been vaccinated is an indictment on the countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines.”

In 10 days’ time, the leaders of the G20 leading industrialised nations will meet. Between now and then, roughly 500 million vaccine doses will be produced. That’s the number needed to achieve the target of vaccinating 40 per cent of the population of every country, by the end of 2021.

Currently, 82 nations are at risk of missing that target. For about 75 per cent of those countries, it is a problem of insufficient supply. The others have some limitations that WHO is helping solve.

On his part, while addressing reporters via a video link, Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister and currently WHO’s Ambassador for Global Health Financing, said it would be a “moral catastrophe of historic proportions” if G20 countries cannot act quickly.”

These nations have pledged to donate more than 1.2 billion vaccine doses to COVAX. According to WHO, so far, only 150 million have been delivered.

With wealthy countries stockpiling millions of unused doses, close to expire, Brown said they should start an “immediate, massive, concerted” airlift of vaccines to low-income countries.

If they don’t do it, Brown argued, they would be guilty of an “economic dereliction of duty that will shame us all.”

He also warned that “the longer vaccine inequity exists, the longer the virus will be present.” Annette Kennedy, President of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), and Heidi Stensmyren, President of the World Medical Association (WMA), also spoke to journalists at the WHO weekly COVID-19 briefing, Ezenwoko’s Blog understands.

1 thought on “COVID-19 Kill 180,000 Health Workers – WHO Reveals

  1. What’s up everyone, it’s my first visit at this web page, and
    post is actually fruitful in support of me, keep up posting such articles.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *