AGQ Labs has signed a collaboration agreement with UNICEF, thanks to which more than 1,600 people will be vaccinated against Covid-19 in low- and middle-income countries, a project promoted by UNICEF, within the COVAX Mechanism, and which promotes equitable global access to the coronavirus vaccine.
Present at the signing, which took place this morning in Seville, were Coral Zamora de la Cruz, partner and founder of AGQ Labs, and Claudia Zafra, president of UNICEF Andalusia Committee.
Coral Zamora highlighted that “this action is part of our corporate social responsibility policy, in which for years we have been prioritizing support for health and childhood, both in its sports or cultural aspect, as well as in initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life. In this sense, this UNICEF program seems to us totally necessary, especially in developing countries, in many of which we have subsidiaries ”.
Claudia Zafra, president of UNICEF Andalusian Committee has valued the importance of the private sector joining the global challenge of vaccinating the world and supporting UNICEF’s response against Covid-19 “since this allows us to accelerate vaccination in the most vulnerable countries. Equitable and fair access to vaccines by all countries is the safest way out of the pandemic and in this task we are all essential. Inequity in vaccines is not only holding back the poorest countries, it is also holding back everyone”, she assured.
UNICEF is the world’s largest supplier of vaccines. Every year it delivers more than 2 billion doses to about 100 countries. This experience and structure has led it to take on the enormous challenge of also getting the vaccines against Covid-19 to all the countries of the world and, especially, to those with fewer resources.
“Controlling the Covid-19 pandemic is an absolute priority, we hope that support such as AGQ Labs will allow us to achieve the ambitious goal of distributing at least 1 billion vaccines before the end of the year”, said Claudia Zafra.
The COVAX Mechanism is co-led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) -of which UNICEF is a part-, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
UNICEF plays a critical role in enabling low- and middle-income countries to access Covid-19 vaccines to ensure that as vaccines become available, no country is left behind.
Currently, 143 countries have received doses of vaccines from the COVAX Mechanism and more than 526 million doses of vaccines have been delivered.
More about UNICEF’s work
UNICEF works in several priority areas such as the coordination and support of the procurement, international transport and distribution of vaccines against Covid-19; the acquisition, storage and shipment, until the end of 2021, of 1 billion syringes and 10 million containers for safe disposal; the purchase and installation of refrigerators to maintain the cold chain; the education and training of health systems to deploy vaccination, both so that they have the adequate infrastructure to receive, store, distribute, preserve, and administer vaccines, as well as to train logistics technicians and health workers.
