Tunisia [Exclusive from Geneva]: WHO grants in-principle approval to Tunisia for COVID vaccine production

On the sidelines of his meeting with prime minister Hichem Mechichi, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told  Tunisie Numérique that “As you know sharing doses is in the interest of every country, it’s not charity. Sharing doses can help to open up the world and that why it’s in the interest of every nation whether high income, middle income or low income all countries actually benefit. So the immediate proposal from  WHO is to share vaccine because the high-income countries have vaccines in their stocks more than they need, so they have to share that”.

Dr Tedros pointed out that the second solution lies in vaccine production “Tunisia is proposing to partner with WHO to start local production and we have agreed for our teams to work together”.He added that “Whenever the prime minister is ready we can send a team to Tunisia that specializes expert in local production to help Tunisia, that for the medium and long term solution”.

In the same Vein, the WHO director-general stressed that Mr Mechichi affirmed the need for a solution as the matter cannot wait for December or November. Dr Tedros said that he asked the G7 to provide a hundred million doses in June and July,50 million by September and of course additional 215 million until the end of this year