World leaders and the private sector on Friday, joined hands with the UN to speed up the development of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The novel coronavirus has infected more than 2.7 million people and killed nearly 190,000
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa joined a video conference to launch collaboration to fight the pandemic. Leaders from Asia, the Middle East and Americas also joined in the call, but some big nations like Russia, India and the US did not participate.
Besides World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the collaboration is co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We are facing a common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted as saying at the virtual meeting, Reuters reported. The group hopes to ramp-up efforts to implement innovative diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines on a large scale to defeat COVID-19.
“Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equal to all. We cannot allow that to happen,” Ghebreyesus added.
In 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, there was criticism that the distribution of vaccines was not equitable as wealthier countries were able to purchase more.
Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund to Fight on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria said, “We must make sure that people who need them (the vaccine) get them. The lessons from AIDS must be learned. Too many millions died before antiretroviral medicines were made widely accessible”.
Merkel said: “This concerns a global public good, to produce this vaccine and to distribute it in all parts of the world”.
According to Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI vaccine alliance, more than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including six already in clinical trials. GAVI vaccine alliance is a public-private partnership that leads immunisation campaigns in poor countries.
Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres conveyed the notion for a universal solution to the universal COVID-19 problem. “A world free of COVID-19 requires the biggest public health effort in global history: Data must be shared, resources mobilised and politics set aside. We are in the fight of our lives. We are in it together. And we will come out of it stronger, together,” he said.
