TheCable

The United Nations (UN) has launched a coronavirus appeal for $6.7 billion to contain the spread of the virus in the world’s most “fragile countries”.

The appeal is a global humanitarian response plan that aims to provide help and protection that prioritize the most vulnerable in society, such as older people, people with disabilities, and women and girls.

In a statement on Thursday, the humanitarian agency projected that the peak of the COVID-19 disease would hit the world’s poorest countries within the next three to six months.

“Tackling the pandemic while continuing to provide lifesaving and essential health services in places where infrastructure is at best limited and often destroyed, health systems are already at breaking point, and where health care workers and communities may be facing conflict and other emergencies – this is an extremely challenging task,” Michael Ryan, the executive director of the UN agency’s health emergencies programme, was quoted to have said.

Commenting on the need for aid, António Guterres, secretary-general of UN, described humanitarian aid as a “practical necessity to combat the virus”.

“If COVID-19 wreaks havoc in the poorest places, we are all at risk,” he said.

The UN’s $6.7 billion global humanitarian response plan calls for a swift and determined action to avert the coronavirus pandemic effects in 63 low and middle-income countries across the world.

Worldometer coronavirus data estimates that there are 2,312,471 people are currently infected with the coronavirus in addition to 271,017 deaths and 1,349,138 recoveries.