As many countries are speeding ahead with their vaccination programmes, many others are being left behind. Addressing vaccine inequity is crucial, now more than ever, because in order to successfully come out of the pandemic, the world needs to start working together. Prince Harry and Meghan Marklehave joined forces with Global Citizen to do just that.
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Global Citizen’s Vax Live
The event is bringing together people from all over the world, to encourage the public to donate to Covax. Covax is an organisation, co-led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), that is working towards providing vaccines to low and middle-income countries.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are the campaign chairs of the event, said in a joint statement:
Over the past year, our world has experienced pain, loss, and struggle—together. Now we need to recover and heal – together.
We can’t leave anybody behind. We will all benefit, we will all be safer, when everyone, everywhere has equal access to the vaccine.
We must pursue equitable vaccine distribution, and, in that, restore faith in our common humanity. This mission couldn’t be more critical or important.
Special guests
The pre-recorded event will be filmed in Los Angeles, and it will be hosted by none other than Selena Gomez. But, she's not the only big star that will be present on stage. This special broadcast will feature a number of musical performances by Jennifer Lopez, Foo Fighters, HER, and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
There are also going to be celebrity guest speakers who will be talking about vaccine equity, like Ben Affleck, Chrissy Teigan, David Letterman, Gayle King, Jimmy Kimmel and Sean Penn. And that’s not all. The event has managed to gather leading politicians to make an appearance including US President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Organisers have also said French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković are planning to attend this worldwide event as well.
