Occupied Territories: Health Services

(asked on 4th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to help facilitate access to covid-19 (a) vaccines and (b) other essential healthcare supplies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.


Answered by
James Cleverly Portrait
James Cleverly
Home Secretary
This question was answered on 9th February 2021

The UK remains committed to ensuring equitable access to effective vaccines as demonstrated by our £548 million contribution to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) - the international initiative to support global equitable access to vaccines. Through match funding, the commitment was leveraged to encourage other donors to commit $1 billion in 2020. We are pleased that the OPTs will be among the first to benefit from the COVAX AMC scheme, with delivery of a first batch of more than 37,000 doses of the of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine anticipated in mid-February.

The UK has also provided £1.25m funding (WHO with £630,000 and UNICEF with £620,000) to purchase and co-ordinate delivery of medical equipment, treat critical care patients, train frontline health workers, and scale up laboratory testing capacity - mainly in Gaza. We remain in regular, close contact with the Palestinian Authority to discuss their plans for access to safe COVID-19 vaccines in the OPTs.

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