IPNEWS-PARIS: Europe and the United States should without delay send enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent’s healthcare workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday

Earlier this week, Macron urged Europe and the United States to allocate up to 5% of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries in an effort to avoid an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality.

Addressing the Munich Security Conference after U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron said the first step should send 13 million doses to Africa – enough, he said, to inoculate all its healthworkers.

“If we announce billions today to supply doses in 6 months, 8 months, a year, our friends in Africa will, under justified pressure from their people, buy doses from the Chinese and the Russians,” Macron told the conference. “And the strength of the West will be a concept, and not a reality.”

Macron said 13 million doses amount to 0.43% of all vaccine shots ordered by Europe and America.

Group of Seven leaders earlier in the day reaffirmed their support to the most vulnerable countries.

Oxfam France urged the G7 countries to break the monopoly held by their pharmaceutical companies. That would be the “fastest, fairest and most effective way to boost vaccine production so that countries don’t have to compete for doses,” the charity said in a statement.

The World Health Organization on Thursday urged nations producing COVID-19 vaccines not to distribute them unilaterally but to donate them to the global COVAX scheme to ensure fairness.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates told the conference the politically sensitive gap between vaccinating people in wealthy and developing countries could narrow to half a year if authorities take proper action.

Meanwhile,John Nkengasong, Director of the African Union’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa CDC, is worried that vaccine apartheid will have dire consequences for Africans in the near future.

Nkengasong in an interview with CNN stressed that the continent needed to be taken along by the developed world as they vigorously roll out inoculation efforts. Africa’s rollout has been relatively slower with over a third of African countries yet to receive doses.

Asked about Africa’s lack of vaccines, he said: “That is absolutely one of our greatest concerns, that the vaccine situation will continue to exacerbate the inequality gap that exists in the world especially the north – south divide.

“My greatest fear also is is that once the US and Europe get the vaccine, they begin to impose the need to have vaccine certificate to travel and that is extremely complicated for Africans to travel across the world.

In his concluding remarks he asked that Africa teams up with development partners to achieve its 60% continent-wide vaccination in the next two years.

“I think that is why we should as a collective of the continent and of course in partnership with the developed world make sure that Africa has a timely access to vaccines to meet our vaccination targets.”