Okonjo Iweala Bags New Apointment From WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that the former Nigerian Finance Minister and a renowned economist, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and Business mogul, Sir Andrew Witty, have accepted to work as Special Envoys overseeing access to COVID-19 tools across the globe.

“I would specially like to thank Sir Andrew Witty and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala for agreeing to act as the Special Envoys for the ACT Accelerator,” WHO’s DG, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced at the launching on Friday.

WHO’s DG, while addressing a teleconference of world and business leaders, researchers, and the press, stressed that the ACT accelerator was a landmark collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics for COVID-19.

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Ghebreyesus emphasized that this was a crucial moment for the world to work together in identifying challenges and solutions, thereby warding off the Coronavirus pandemic.

“The Act accelerator seems to bring together the combined power of many organization to work with speed and scale.

“Today, WHO is proud to be uniting with many partners to launch the Acess to Covid-19 Tools (Act) accelerator,” he said.

He said it would still be counter-productive if the COVID-19 vaccine was out but not equally accessible to all people.

“Our shared commitment is to ensure that all people have access to all the tools to defeat COVID-19, ” he said.

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On his part, the President of the African Union(AU), Cyril Ramaphosa lauded WHO for timely intervention in the African continent.

The launching, according to WHO, was largely co-hosted by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron and Bill and Melinda Gates.

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