The World Health Organisation, WHO has said that $28.5 billion is urgently needed to finance the access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator to ensure equitable and worldwide access to vaccines and other equipment to combat the pandemic, an official said.
The Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, disclosed this on Thursday while addressing the opening ceremony of the Paris peace forum.
“We have two urgent requests for the international community: first, the aid accelerator will be no more than a noble gesture unless it is fully funded.
“The current financing gap for the aid accelerator is 28.5 billion dollars, and 4.5 billion dollars is needed urgently to maintain momentum,” Tedros said.
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The second request, according to the WHO head, is to ensure fair allocation of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics as public goods, not private commodities.
“To achieve that we must commit to the following five principles of the aid accelerator charter: share data and knowledge ensure health system capacity, fair and transparent pricing, leveraging publicly funded research and global coordinator for equitable allocation,” Tedros added.
The ACT-Accelerator was launched by the WHO, European Commission, France and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation back in late April to speed up production and equitable distribution of equipment and materials necessary to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
