Abuja, May 25, 2022 – In line with its unconditional defence of fair, equitable and universal access to vaccines against Covid-19, Spain yesterday donated a batch of 4.4 million doses of Johnson&Johnson vaccines to Nigeria.
The handover ceremony of these monodose vaccines took place at the premises of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, which ensures with the support of UNICEF that vaccines get to people’s arms. The ceremony was presided by the Executive Director of the Agency, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, and counted on the presence of the Ambassador of Spain, the Ambassador to the EU, Ambassadors of Greece, Sweden and Austria, UNICED Director of Health and WHO Deputy Country Representative.
With this donation, Spain stands out as the third donor of Covid vaccines to Nigeria It is the largest donation Spain has done to a single country in Africa so far. Furthermore, these figures place Spain as the seventh largest donor of vaccines in the world, with 70 million doses already delivered.
Spain is fully committed to multilateral efforts. Consequently, this donation, and more than 90% of Spanish donations, have been made through the COVAX mechanism.
Additionally, this donation constitutes one more action of "Team Europe” in Nigeria, integrated by the EU and its Member States. Altogether, the EU and EU countries have donated 30 million vaccines to Nigeria so far.
All the speakers – UNICEF representative Mr. Eduardo Celades, WHO representative Mr. Alexander Chimbaru, the NPHCDA Executive Director Dr. Faisal Shuaib, the EU Ambassador Mrs. Samuela Isopi and Ambassador of Spain Mr. Juan Sell – agreed on the importance to continue putting all the efforts on the vaccination campaign. Dr. Faisal Shuaib was the one better summing it up: vaccines do not save lives, vaccination does.
As Ambassador Sell underscored, to defeat the pandemic it is important to reach to every citizen and corner of the world, including the most remote areas; we have to strengthen primary health systems; and we must improve global mechanisms for technology transfer to decentralise the production of health products in all regions, particularly in Africa.
In that sense, the President of the Government of Spain announced at the recent II Global Summit against COVID, that Spain will allocate $300 million for the donation of an additional 30 million COVID vaccines and to strengthen public health systems through projects related to COVID-19, which will be implemented by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.
Spain has also joined the World Health Organisation's COVID-19 Technology Access Group and is part of the Team Europe initiative on manufacturing and access to vaccines that the Ambassador of the EU to Nigeria presented. This initiative will help create an enabling environment for local vaccines manufacturing in Africa and tackle barriers on both supply and demand sides, backed by €1 billion from the EU budget and the European development finance institutions such as the European Investment Bank (EIB). Nigeria is among the selected countries.
Spain remains committed to all these joint efforts: No-one will be safe until we are all safe.