Turkish Health minister, WHO chief meet in Geneva

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Turkish health minister on Monday met in Geneva as part of 75th World Health Assembly.

Fahrettin Koca told WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that Türkiye is trying to help low- and middle-income countries get access to COVID-19 vaccines, and is focusing on Africa in this context.

Ghebreyesus for his part said he is pleased that Türkiye produced the COVID-19 vaccine Turkovac. He added that the BioNTech vaccine can also be considered a Turkish vaccine since it was developed by scientists Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, a Turkish-German immigrant couple.

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Türkiye has donated nearly 7 million vaccine doses to 19 countries, according to the nation’s Foreign Ministry.