Coronavirus: WHO forms global alliance to raise billions for Covid-19 vaccine, treatment
- The initiative aims to ensure that vaccines and treatment for the disease will reach all countries, not just rich ones
- ‘Covid-19 respects no borders. Covid-19 anywhere is a threat to people everywhere,’ UN chief said at the virtual meeting
World leaders threw their support behind the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday, as the United Nations agency unveiled new collaborative efforts to ensure that all countries have access to safe and effective coronavirus diagnostics, treatments and vaccines once they are developed.
Missing from the roster of heads of state and political leaders who pledged their commitment to the initiative at a WHO webcast event was representation from the US, which has recently turned its back on the agency and held off its financing pending a review into what it contends is the WHO’s bias toward China.
Calling for politics to be “set aside”, United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres said that the pandemic required making treatments and vaccines available to all and not just “for one country, or one region, or one half of the world”.
Billed by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a “landmark collaboration”, the initiative is a loosely defined partnership among governments, research institutions, non-profit and private-sector entities, with the objective of ensuring timely and universal access to tools to fight Covid-19.
“As new diagnostics, treatments and vaccines become available, we have a responsibility to get them out equitably with the understanding that all lives have equal value,” said Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, one of the effort’s backers.
The collaborative initiative will also help to ensure that efforts are not duplicated, said Andrew Witty, the former chief executive of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline who has been appointed one of two “special envoys” coordinating the platform.
A fundraising campaign to support the new efforts is to begin on May 4. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on Friday that the aim was to raise €7.5 billion (US$8.1 billion) to support work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment.
