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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

PM meets with US official to lobby for vaccines

by

1391 days ago
20210527
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Suzanne Sheppard

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will to­day have a vir­tu­al meet­ing with US House Ma­jor­i­ty Whip Con­gress­man James Clyburn to con­tin­ue lob­by­ing for vac­cines from the US for T&T.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne con­firmed this yes­ter­day con­cern­ing T&T’s lat­est ef­forts to get vac­cines.

T&T has ob­tained vac­cines so far from Bar­ba­dos, In­dia, Chi­na, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Bermu­da.

This coun­try is al­so seek­ing jabs from the US, Eu­ro­pean Union, African Med­ical Coun­cil, Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, John­son & John­son and await­ing ap­proval re­gard­ing Cu­ba’s vac­cines.

T&T is seek­ing to get some of the 80 mil­lion vac­cines which the US is dis­trib­ut­ing.

Row­ley has writ­ten US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and spo­ken to oth­er US of­fi­cials on the is­sue.

Af­ter Row­ley’s meet­ing with Clyburn, Browne will lat­er to­day meet Dr Beth Cameron, who is Biden’s se­nior di­rec­tor for glob­al health se­cu­ri­ty.

“She’s a lead pol­i­cy­mak­er for their glob­al vac­cine strat­e­gy,” Browne said.

Browne didn’t com­ment on how many vac­cines T&T would seek from the US.

“We’re seek­ing as many as we can get,” he said.

He added that on Tues­day, he met Win­nie Byany­i­ma, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UN­AIDS, to dis­cuss “The Peo­ple’s” vac­cine ini­tia­tive and how it can help shape vac­cine ini­tia­tives com­ing out of the EU and North Amer­i­ca.

“Such meet­ings and in­ter­jec­tions will con­tin­ue at all lev­els aimed not just at press­ing for de­tails of the vac­cine ini­tia­tive to be fi­nalised and dis­sem­i­nat­ed as soon as pos­si­ble but al­so seek­ing to proac­tive­ly shape those de­tails in favour of T&T and Cari­com,” he said.

On the EU’s vac­cine plan an­nounced last week, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said Row­ley would write the EU on the is­sue im­me­di­ate­ly, Browne met with EU of­fi­cials in T&T and T&T’s am­bas­sador in Brus­sels were al­so work­ing on that is­sue.

Yes­ter­day, Browne added, “Our diplo­mats in Brus­sels lead by am­bas­sador Col­in Con­nel­ly are fol­low­ing up di­rect­ly with the EU their vac­cine an­nounce­ment sub­se­quent to the PM’s prompt cor­re­spon­dence.”


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