Booster programs in rich countries are not the problem, insufficient deployment of resources (which can include necessary IP) to scale out production and distribution to poorer countries is the problem.
The former does not require and is not the reason for the latter.
It makes sense to criticize rich countries for not distributing more vaccines to poorer ones.
It makes no sense to claim that the crisis will be ‘prolonged’ unless you can define an endpoint.
I am not aware that the WHO has defined an endpoint to the ‘covid crisis’. If I’m wrong, please point me to their definition.
Therefore this is a valid criticism mixed in with irresponsible logic. Exactly the kind of political statement that undermines the legitimacy of the WHO.
Basically the argument is those boosters should be used as 1st doses in poor counties, so we don't get another delta(India) Omicron(South Africa). The WHO was late to call it a pandemic, when it was clearly one. And realistically they need to start helping these poor countries build out their own medical capabilities to produce vaccines. The 20th century operation model doesn't work with 7 billion people.
If you accept the evidence that Omicron is a weaker variant (eg. the low hospitalization numbers in the UK despite the surge in cases), then our strategy of partially vaccinating the 3rd world was a success.
Omicron seems to be at the same level of deadliness now as the flu, so this whole pandemic is being maintained now purely by political and media energy, rather than any scientific justification.
Even when true, deadliness is just one part of the problem. The second part is transmissibility.
Flu is not highly transmissible, it has R0 = 1.3 only. This means that 75% of the population will be not affected by. It can only kill 0.025% of the population.
If Omicron has R0 = 9 as has been claimed, it will infect 90% of the population.
When it had same mortality as flu, it could kill 0.09% of the population - that is 4x difference. In US it would be roughly 750000 deaths because of flu and 300000 because of Omicron.
Now this probably will work in setting where the speed of the transmission is slow enough that hospitals can manage the requirements put on them. If they could not because of too many concurrent cases, number of deaths can be higher.
Providing vaccines is just one part of the solution.
Instead of wining and again trying to destroy the credibility of science and doctors (like happened with masks), WHO should step up and help to deploy vaccines in Africa.
The former does not require and is not the reason for the latter.