In January, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, issued a blunt warning. The world was ″on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure,″ he said. Wealthy countries were buying up available COVID-19 vaccines, leaving tiny amounts for others—a replay of what happened during the 2009 influenza pandemic. ″The price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world′s poorest countries,″ Tedros said. He was right.
