India began shipping its domestically-developed AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to other countries under the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) COVAX facility, as per the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRP) report.
The COVAX has been established to ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine.
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Taking to the microblogging site Twitter, WHO South Asia revealed that the first batches were rolled out from India’s Serum Institute in Pune.
This comes after WHO gave approval for emergency use of the AstraZeneca vaccine developed in India and Korea.
According to a CNN report, India's external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said the first shipments are bound for countries in Africa.
This comes as WHO recently established a no-fault compensation mechanism to compensate people who bear the severe side-effects from the vaccine. For this mechanism, WHO has collaborated with Swiss insurance company Chubb Limited. This program is for 92 low- and middle-income countries and economies that are eligible for support from COVAX.
According to WHO’s official release, the agreement marks the first and only vaccine injury compensation mechanism to operate on a global scale.
WHO added that the program will give people in the participating countries a fast, fair, robust, and transparent process to be compensated for rare but serious adverse events related to the vaccines distributed through COVAX through June 30, 2022.