UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at an international vaccine summit hosted by the UK, urged world leaders to “unite humanity in the fight against disease”.
The PM on Thursday will lead the charge for a £6billion boost to the Gavi vaccine alliance as he kicks off a virtual gathering with other heads of state, private sector and charity leaders.
Gavi, a global vaccine alliance part-funded by Bill and Melinda Gates has for more than 20 years, has developed and distributed vaccines in some of the world’s poorest countries for diseases such as malaria, cholera, measles and HIV/Aids.
According to Dr Seth Berkley, Gavi’s CEO, the money will be used to immunise three million children and prevent as many as seven million deaths.
The event hopes to raise more than $7.4 billion. "I hope this summit will be the moment when the world comes together to unite humanity in the fight against disease," news agency AFP quoted Johnson as saying.
After the pandemic broke out, focus suddenly shifted from global healthcare to a battle of politics between the US and China, with Trump saying the WHO was defending China despite it not sharing information regarding the virus early on.
The summit will try to progress plans for an as yet undiscovered coronavirus vaccine to be distributed equitably, and not just to the western powers that funded the research.
Berkley, Gavi’s CEO, said as per the organisation's principles, one of its aims is to organise predictable large-scale demand for vaccines to ensure private pharmaceutical companies manufacture the drugs at the volume and the price poorer countries can afford. And while several world leaders have called for a people’s vaccine, the mechanism to achieve this, and prevent so-called vaccine nationalism, needs developing.
More than 50 countries are taking part in the meeting, where Australia will pledge A$300 million ($20.75 million) to provide vaccines to children in the Indo-Pacific region at the summit, it's Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said. “The Covid-19 pandemic has served as yet another reminder that investing in vaccine access is critical to regional health security, ” she added.
The estimate is this pandemic is going to cost the world $9tn, and we are asking about billions of dollars, so it is a lot, but in the wider context it is a rounding error. The world needs to cooperate on coronavirus vaccine since if every high-income country backed a single vaccine on its own, they are taking a risky bet. The a priori chance of any vaccine succeeding is about 5 per cent,” he said.
The UK has already pledged £1.65bn over the next five years to the global vaccines push and committed £388m specifically to help develop a COVID-19 vaccine at a separate conference last month.
Gates said as much as 80 per cent of the population would need to take a vaccine, and if people have heard it is a plot the epidemic would continue. In the last year alone, a total of 161 million doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine has been procured through the AMC.
Gavi has also been playing a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems as well as funding global stockpiles of vaccines to fight Ebola, cholera, meningitis, and yellow fever. Research published last week by the Gavi showed that coronavirus had diverted health workers so that the routine vaccine programme was being blown off course.
