'Until Everyone Is Safe, No One Is Safe': Africa Awaits The COVID-19 Vaccine

As slow as the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has been in the United States, some estimates say billions of people around the world won't be vaccinated for COVID-19 until 2022 or 2023 . Bloomberg has been publishing a map that shows the level of vaccine distribution in different countries and virtually the entire continent of Africa — more than 50 nations — is blank. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former president of Liberia, says much of Africa may be left out until next year. Sirleaf recalls the Ebola outbreak, which hit her country, among others, in West Africa in 2015. Last year, she was asked to co-chair a review of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. And, in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition , she says Africa is in danger of being left behind. "In Africa, we don't have the resources. It's as simple as that," Sirleaf says "Unless vaccine is seen as a free good on the basis that until everyone is safe, no one is safe — when it's seen in