This includes a pledge of €1.4 billion by the Commission. This almost reaches the initial target of €7.5 billion and is a solid starting point for the worldwide pledging marathon, which begins today. The aim is to gather significant funding to ensure the collaborative development and universal deployment of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines against coronavirus. The initial target of €7.5 billion will not be enough to ensure the distribution of coronavirus health technologies worldwide, as this involves significant costs in terms of production, procurement and distribution. A universal and affordable Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT-Accelerator) was the main objective of the 24 April call to action from global health partners. For this, significant funding is needed, as well as a solid collaborative structure, with a clarity of purpose to ensure that the donated money is put to good use and to avoid fragmentation of efforts. This framework is designed as a coordination structure to steer and oversee progress made globally in accelerating work on developing vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics with universal access as well as strengthening health systems as required for meeting these three priorities. This collaboration framework is intended to be time-bound (2 years, renewable) and build on existing organisations without creating any new structures.
The three partnerships would work as autonomously as possible, with a transversal work stream on enhancing the capacity of health systems and knowledge and data sharing. The Global Vaccines Summit that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, will organise on 4 June will mobilise additional funding to protect the next generation with vaccines. As the world relies on Gavi’s work for making vaccination available everywhere, the success of Gavi’s replenishment will be crucial to the success of the Coronavirus Global Response. On 24 April, the World Health Organization (WHO) and an initial group of health actors launched a collaboration for the accelerated development, production and equitable global Access to COVID-19 Tools – the ACT Accelerator. Together, they issued a call to action.
Read more at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_797