South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday urged wealthy countries not to hoard surplus COVID-19 vaccine supplies, adding his voice to calls for global production to be shared more equally. President Ramaphosa was speaking in a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum. With Africa struggling to secure sufficient vaccines to start countrywide inoculation programmes for its 1.3 billion people, the head of the international Gavi vaccine alliance meanwhile said the surplus doses that richer countries had ordered ran into the hundreds of millions. Ramaphosa, who chairs the African Union and whose nation has recorded nearly half the continent's coronavirus deaths, said the world needed those who had hoarded doses to release them for others to use.
To expand on the address we are joined by:
• Fatima Hassan is the Head: Health Justice Initiative in South Africa
• Sanusha Naidoo from the Institute for Global Dialogue
