New Telegraph

WHO: $28.5bn needed to finance COVID-19 tools

Africa confirmed cases surpass 1.9m

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. The Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, disclosed this yesterday 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, and $4.5 billion is needed urgently to maintain momentum,” Tedros said.

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. Meanwhile, the WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, has said that there are over 1.9 million confirmed COVID- 19 cases on the African continent.

Read Previous

Eating nuts can improve sperm quality – Study

Read Next

NSE breaks five-year jinx, gains N1.084trn

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *