Turkiye donated nearly 7M doses of COVID vaccines to 19 countries

By Adem Balta

ANKARA (AA) – Turkiye has donated nearly 7 million vaccine doses to 19 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Delivering a speech at a meeting of the parliamentary sub-committee of Turks abroad and related communities, Yavuz Selim Kiran said: “We have evacuated over 100,000 Turkish citizens from 142 countries since the beginning of the crisis.”

Nearly 720,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were sent to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, he said.

Turkiye, with contributions by Azerbaijan, Hungary and Uzbekistan, delivered 400,000 vaccine doses to Burkina Faso, and 200,000 doses were sent to Togo on behalf of the Organization of Turkic States.

Also, Turkiye sent 1.7 million doses to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 500,000 doses to Benin, 200,000 doses to Niger, 1 million doses to Tanzania, and 290,000 doses to Somalia.

Kiran further said 500,000 doses were delivered to Mali and 200,000 doses to Sierra Leone.

In a period when the coronavirus pandemic affected the whole global system, Turkiye did a good job, he asserted.

Kiran said Turkiye has always stood with its citizens across the world during the pandemic.

"There were curfews in almost all of the countries where our citizens were at that time. For instance, we took our citizens by buses from certain points of the city after we got special permission due to the curfew in Italy," he explained.