The executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said Sunday that economic prosperity on the continent depends on vaccines, lamenting that only 2.3% of Africa's population has been immunized.

"The path to economic prosperity today is through covid-19 vaccines, but only 2.3% of the population of 1.3 billion Africans have been vaccinated," Vera Songwe lamented.

Quoted in a UNECA press release, the also UN deputy secretary-general recalled the vaccination target of 30% by December this year and stressed that if group immunity is to be achieved these figures must reach at least 60 or 70%.

During the monthly panel featuring the director of the African Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Songwe argued that African states should pay for vaccines because it gives them independence from donors.

"The fact that Africa has been able to come together to distribute its own vaccines, not free vaccines, for the continent is clearly a way to ensure prosperity," he stressed, concluding that "paying for what you need is a guarantee that you will get it, because if you wait for donations, the uncertainty around vaccines increases."

Present at the panel, according to UNECA, the director of Africa CDC, John Nkengasong, stressed that "health system strengthening is not a cost but an investment" and argued that health should be at the center of policies.

"Africa must put the public health agenda at the center of both political and economic dialogue, because nobody drills a well when they are thirsty, wells are drilled before we are thirsty, and so you don't develop a health system in the middle of a pandemic, but you do it in preparation for another pandemic," he argued.

Lusa Agency