Thank you very much and I also thank you for this opportunity.
Addressing intellectual property rights to improve global access to supplies is essential and must be accompanied by investment in health systems and health workers to deliver those supplies. The CARE confederation has reached 15.7 million people in 53 countries with our COVID programming. Though each context varies, CARE's analysis indicates that the true cost is often much higher than the global estimates account for, when factoring in health workforce and community readiness costs.
Vaccine equity requires targeted and increased investment in delivery. In April, CARE testified to the UN Security Council on vaccine equity gaps in humanitarian settings.
Today I will provide testimony using northwest Syria as a case study regarding vaccine equity and focus on awareness raising. I will give a brief description of the Syrian context.
Compared to the global and Canadian populations, few Syrians have been vaccinated. Only about 9% of the total Syrian population have received one dose and only about 5% are fully vaccinated.
In Syria, COVID is at the bottom of the list of priorities. People face so many hardships including shelling, violence and lack of food and shelter, let alone COVID masks. They live in tents or improvised shelters and cannot socially distance. However, it's positive that 70% of health and humanitarian workers in Syria are fully vaccinated now.
In our context, there's a critical shortage of all health staff. They work long hours in difficult conditions and most health facilities are improvised. They could be in a house, an abandoned building or a school, and they're not equipped as a normal hospital or health facility is. The health and safety of those workers are constantly at risk. They lack consistent access to personal protective equipment. Early in the pandemic they lacked basic leave. Sometimes staff would even conceal symptoms so they would not lose pay.
Because they work in such contexts, some are threatened, beaten or even stabbed, yet health workers—over 70% of whom are women at the global level—are the key to equitable vaccine delivery. Trusted providers can reach underserved communities, doing door-to-door and in-person communication to build vaccine acceptance. They are trusted because they meet families' holistic health needs, including childhood immunization and reproductive and maternal health care. It's very important to have women vaccinators who are more likely to be trusted by women patients.
To achieve vaccine equity, these are my key recommendations.
It's critically important that all actors invest in equitable health systems delivery. We ask that Canada adequately and consistently fund frontline and community health care workers and the organizations they work for.
We must also ensure that there are consistent norms and standards to ensure fair pay and safe and supportive working conditions for all health workers, including humanitarian responses. This includes ensuring they have access to personal protective equipment, testing and treatment, vaccines and paid sick leave.
Finally, to ensure that health workers and their organizations have meaningful roles in decision-making as well as the delivery of the COVID vaccine rollout, their leadership and expertise must drive decision-making for health care delivery in crisis settings. They can address hesitancy and gender-related disparities in access to COVID information and services, including collecting and using sex, age and gender disaggregated data. They can also develop strategies to specifically reach women and other marginalized populations.
Thank you.