The World Health Organization is ‘incredibly supportive’ of electronic vaccination certificates, but attaches great importance to how they might be used, Director of the WHO Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Kate O’Brien said, Trend reports citing TASS.
"We are incredibly supportive of electronic vaccination certificates for a number of reasons," she told reporters, adding that such certificates can contain information about the medicine that was used and, therefore, facilitate assessment programs on safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
"There is a real range of positive benefits from an electronic vaccination certificate <…> that an individual or a parent of a child is able to hold," she said, adding that in this situation, it is very important "what you actually use those records for."
According to the WHO official, "the standards for having electronic records and individually held records are some of the most important things to assure that there is privacy around those records." She also said that electronic vaccination certificates must not be used "to potentially constrain people from their opportunity for travel."
A similar opinion was expressed by Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Michael Ryan.
"At the present time, the use of certification of vaccination as a requirement for travel is not advised, because quite simply vaccination is just not available enough around the world and is not available certainly on an equal basis," he said.
"Inequity and unfairness can be further branded into the system if we continue to make decisions on what people can and can’t do, where they can and can’t go on the basis of being vaccinated, when being vaccinated itself is not something that everyone has equal access to," he added.