Greece Donates More than 1.3 Million Covid Vaccines to Ethiopia

Greece donated 1,346,400 coronavirus vaccines to Ethiopia through a team of EU member states, the Greek Foreign Affairs Ministry announced on Wednesday.

“Greece supports the people of Ethiopia in their efforts to fight the Covid-19 pandemic,” wrote the Ministry, adding that the donation totaling 13 million vaccines was facilitated by the World Health Organization’s agency Covax.

#Greece supports the people of #Ethiopia in their efforts to fight the #COVID19 pandemic and donated an additional 1.346.400 doses of vaccines to🇪🇹, through #COVAX. The donation was made in the framework of #EU2022FR and joint initiatives of #TeamEurope

📷@AmbafranceET pic.twitter.com/REnhNpdKVC

— Υπουργείο Εξωτερικών (@GreeceMFA) February 2, 2022

These new deliveries come in addition to an earlier donation by EU member states of more than 10.5 million vaccine doses.

EU member states have engaged under the framework of the COVAX Facility, which aims to coordinate equitable access and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.

This international initiative, which brings together several key actors such as the WHO and UNICEF, has brought effective support to the African continent, providing its first vaccine delivery in February 2021, and to Ethiopia with a first delivery on March 7, 2021.

In total, “Team Europe” has provided around two-thirds of the Covid-19 vaccines donated to Ethiopia. This is a crucial contribution to the important efforts of the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to speed up the vaccination campaign throughout the country and reach its objective of 70% of the population vaccinated by the end of 2022.

In the last few days, Ethiopia has received more than 13 million Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccines through the COVAX mechanism, donated by France (6,746,400 doses), Finland (1,699,200 doses), Denmark (1,560,000 doses), Greece (1,346,400 doses), Italy (1,264,110 doses) and Sweden (480,690 doses).

These new deliveries come in addition to more than 10.5 million vaccine doses already donated by EU member states to Ethiopia through COVAX, including nearly 7.5 million doses from Germany as well as 165,600 doses from Portugal, making it a total of almost 24 million doses received since the beginning of the pandemic.

Greece donates millions of vaccines to Africa, Asia

Greece has been donating Covid vaccines to several countries in Asia and Africa over recent months.

In early January Greece donated almost one million Covid-19 vaccines to Nigeria.

The announcement was made by Greek foreign minister Nikos Dendias, who was beginning an official visit to the African nation, the first-ever by a Greek foreign minister to Nigeria.

“I am happy that I am symbolically bringing with me a ‘present’ to the Nigerian society and to the Nigerian people. And this is almost a million vaccines,” Dendias said at the time.

The donation to Nigeria followed similar donations to the nations of Ghana, Gabon and Indonesia.

“Greece actively contributes to the fight against the COVID19 pandemic on the global level. Greece offered its support to the people and the government of Indonesia and donated a total of 703,200 vaccines to the country, in partnership with global initiatives like COVAX”, the Greek Foreign Ministry said.