The UN COVID-19 Supply Task Force is a task force set up by the
United Nations to coordinate the procurement and distribution of
personal protective equipment,
diagnostic tests
A medical test is a medical procedure performed to screening (medicine), detect, medical diagnosis, diagnose, or monitoring (medicine), monitor diseases, disease processes, susceptibility, or to determine a course of treatment. Medical tests suc ...
and oxygen to countries with overstretched
healthcare systems.
This initiative will be run by the
World Health Organization and the
World Food Programme, along with the multiple partners of
United Nations.
[ The hubs of this ]supply chain system
In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, activ ...
will be located in China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, Belgium, Ethiopia, Panama, Malaysia, Ghana, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. According to the WHO, the supply chain may need to cover more than 30% of the world's needs in the acute phase of the pandemic
A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...
. WHO announced that the World Food Programme will need to deploy eight 747 aircraft, eight medium-sized cargo aircraft and several smaller passenger planes to move the equipment and staff.[
]
References
World Health Organization
International responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
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