Covid-19: UN seeks $10bn intervention to aid 63 low-income nations

…….Urges G20 nations to help stop impending havoc

…….Says 256 million people already on brink of starvation in 2020

By Charles Joseph

July 17, 2020 - The United Nations has launched a $10 billion fund to help 63 low income nations fight the covid-19 pandemic, UN’s top humanitarian official, Mark Lowcock said on Friday.

This is even as it appealed to the G20 nations to step up their interventions to the poor nations so as to avert the impending havoc that the virus would wreak

According the UN, the recession occasioned by the pandemic had already increased global poverty and was now pushing 265 million people to the point of starvation by the end of 2020.

“The pandemic and associated global recession are about to wreak havoc in fragile and low-income countries”, he said. “The response of wealthy nations so far has been grossly inadequate and dangerously short-sighted.

“Failure to act now will leave the virus free to circle round the globe, undo decades of development and create a generation’s worth of tragic and exportable problems.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this – this is a problem that can be fixed with money from wealthy nations and fresh thinking from the shareholders of international financial institutions and supporters of UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, and NGOs.”

The UN said that as of Thursday, there were more than 13 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and nearly 580,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Mr. Lowcock fears that unless G20 countries act now, they will face a series of human tragedies more brutal and destructive than the direct health impacts of the pandemic.

“Rich countries have thrown out the rulebook when it comes to protecting their own economies. They must apply the same exceptional measures to countries that need help”, he declared.

“The prospect of cascading crises more brutal and destructive than anything the virus alone can do must jolt us all out of our comfort zone.”

UN agencies estimate that due to disruptions to health systems caused by the pandemic, some 6,000 children could die each every day from preventable causes, while annual deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, could double.

Source: UN News