Former President Tarja Halonen and other leaders and influential individuals from Finland have joined a group of former presidents and prime ministers from around the world to urge the world's richest countries to help deliver Covid vaccines to the world's poorest nations.
The petition, led by former UK Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, is set to be handed over to leaders attending the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Cornwall, England next weekend.
Apart from President Halonen, other Finnish signatories of the letter include former PM Esko Aho as well as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Bengt Holmström.
According to UK newspaper the Guardian, the letter urged G7 countries to pay for two-thirds of the 54 billion euros which is needed to vaccinate the poorest countries of the world, basing the figure on the size of the countries' economies.
The Guardian reported that summit's host, UK PM Boris Johnson, said on Sunday that he would ask the G7's leaders to "rise to the greatest challenge of the postwar era" by "vaccinating the world by the end of next year" but did not specify how such an effort would be financed.
Countries belonging to the G7 include the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada.