The director-general of World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Nigeria's COVID-19 response has been commendable.
This is even as she promised that the world trade body would work to reduce export restrictions among member states, especially with regards to medical supplies in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.
The WTO boss stated this when she met with members of the Presidential Task Force on Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic at the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, yesterday in Abuja.
The WTO DG, who said she was on a thank you visit to Nigeria and the ECOWAS for the support she received in the run up to her elections into the trade body, stressed that in a pandemic, an economy cannot be advanced until the health sector was taken care of.
According to her: "The main reason we are here is really to see how the WTO can support Nigeria, in improving its economy and part of doing that is the health. We are in a pandemic and of course, you cannot advance the economy until you take care of the health aspects.
So what the Secretary to the Government office is doing along with the presidential Task Force is laudable, and we wanted to just discuss with them, one, what is happening, the arrival of the COVID vaccines, how that is being distributed, the challenges, opportunities on the way of that and what the WTO can do.
"Interestingly, trade is very instrumental in access to medical supplies and equipment, because how do they get from one place to the other? It is through trade. And part of the challenges we've had in this pandemic is the fact that some of our member countries put export restrictions on the movement of medical supplies, equipment, and even supplies to make vaccines.
"So one of the things that WTO can do is to work with members to reduce these export restrictions. If you take vaccines, for instance,
I'll just give you one number from the manufacturer of Pfizer, the Pfizer BioTech vaccine. We had a meeting with the manufacturers a couple of days ago in Geneva and their representative said that it takes 280 components to manufacture their vaccine. And it's in a supply chain that involves 19 countries. So in the supply chains, so many of our products, medical products are global. And so when a country puts export restrictions on one, it means that you slow the production everywhere, that's where the WTO comes in. Because, we have certain rules that members should abide by, with respect to these restrictions. And we play a fundamental role in making sure that medical supplies and equipment and vaccines circulate.