The World Health Organisation has urged the 20 leaders with the power to overturn the “disgraceful” global imbalance in access to Covid-19 vaccines to reverse the tide before October.

The WHO's Bruce Aylward said the world should be “disgusted” — and asked whether the situation could have been any worse had there been an active effort to block the planet's poor from getting vaccinated, according to AFP.

Aylward, the WHO's frontman on accessing the tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic, urged people to tell politicians and business tycoons that it was electorally and financially safe to increase vaccine coverage in poorer nations.

“There's probably 20 people in the world that are crucial to solving this equity problem,” he told a WHO social media live interaction.