Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and some world leaders have called for urgent investments of USD 23.4 billion to put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic this year.
“Only if vaccines, tests, and treatments are made available to all the people, we can defeat the pandemic in 2022, ” he said on Wednesday.
Guterres and some world leaders have called for raising this fund to support the ACT-Accelerator, the global collaboration that makes these goods accessible to everyone worldwide, the media reported.
The UN chief regretted that “Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times — and people are paying the price,” as he underlined the urgency to act at the earlier.
“Until and unless we can ensure access to these tools, the pandemic will not go away, and the sense of insecurity of the people will only deepen.”
A few weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic, the ACT-Accelerator was established in April 2020 to speed up development and provide access to Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. The global vaccine solidarity initiative COVAX is one of its four pillars.
This partnership brought together governments, scientists, philanthropists, businesses, civil society, and global health organizations such as GAVI, the vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the UN’s health agency, WHO.
They launched the resource mobilization campaign on Wednesday to meet a USD 16 billion financing gap, and about USD 7 billion for in-country delivery costs, to end Covid-19 as a global health emergency this year.
The ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council, which provides political leadership to advocate for resource mobilization, recently urged over 50 rich countries to encourage “fair share” contributions.
“If we want to ensure vaccinations for everyone to end this pandemic, we must first inject fairness into the system,” Guterres said.
These resources will help curb viral transmission, break the cycle of its variants, relieve overburdened health workers and systems, and save lives, the leaders said, warning that with every month of delay, the global economy stands to lose nearly four times the investment of USD 23.4 billion the ACT-Accelerator needs to provide lifesaving tools, and personal protective equipment (PPEs) for health workers, to low and middle-income countries.
The resources will support key measures, including vaccine rollouts, creating a Pandemic Vaccine Pool (PVP) of 600 million doses, purchasing 700 million tests, buying treatments for 120 million patients, and cent percent of the oxygen requirements of low-income countries.
“The longer inequitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments persists, the longer the pandemic will persist,” said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who co-chairs the Council together with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
Although over 4.7 billion pandemic tests have been administered globally so far, a WHO report said only about 22 million (0.4 percent) were administered in low-income countries. And, only 10 percent of the people in these nations have received at least one vaccine dose.
So far, the ACT-Accelerator has financed vital research and development of new therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics, and delivered more than a billion vaccine doses through COVAX, the media reported.
The UN’s plan has an overall budget of USD 23.4 billion. It has urged the donors to contribute USD 16.8 billion. But they have only pledged USD 814 million, leaving the USD 16 billion financing gap. The UN expects the remaining USD 6.5 billion could be self-financed by middle-income countries.
The UN needs another USD 6.8 billion for in-country delivery of vaccines and diagnostics.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has underlined the urgent need to ensure tests, treatments, and vaccines are distributed equitably globally.
“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-Accelerator costs, the partnership can support low and middle-income countries to overcome low Covid-19 vaccination levels, weak testing, and medicine shortages,” he added.