WTO Urges to Diversity Vaccines Production in Latam, Africa

The World Trade Organization (WTO) warned on Thursday that it is essential to diversity the COVID-19 vaccine production by supporting its manufacturing in Latin America and Africa.

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During an international summit on global health in Rome, the WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala explains that 80 percent of the world´s vaccine production is limited to 10 countries in Europe, North America, and South Asia.

"It’s not normal that Africa, with 1.3 billion people, has 0.17 percent of the manufacturing capacity of the world. So it has to change," the official added, noticing that Latin America has 2 percent of global vaccine production.

The warning comes amid controversy over the waiving of patents for COVID-19 vaccines that the U.S. China and Russia have supported but the European Union refuses to accept. The WTO has not explicitly engaged with any position but called countries to support vaccine production in developing countries.