The World Health Organization (WHO) urged wealthy countries on Wednesday to provide an emergency $16 billion that is still missing to fund its plan to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“Science has given us the tools” to fight the pandemic, “if shared globally in solidarity, we can end COVID-19 as a global health emergency this year,” said the chief executive. from WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“If high-income countries pay their fair share” of ACT-A funding, this program “can help low- and middle-income countries overcome low COVID-19 vaccination rates, poor testing and the shortage of drugs,” he said in a statement.
The meteoric spread of the Omicron variant makes the equitable distribution of tests, treatments and vaccines all the more urgent, he insisted.
The ACT-A accelerator, the English acronym for Access to tools against COVID, is a device created by major international health agencies but also the World Bank or the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Led by the WHO, it is responsible for speeding up access to tools to fight COVID-19 in disadvantaged countries.
One of its components is the Covax system, set up at the start of the pandemic and before the arrival of effective vaccines, to try to guarantee equitable access for the whole world to vaccines. He delivered his billionth dose of vaccine in mid-January.
Running ACT-A required some $23.4 billion over the October 2021 – September 2022 period, but only $800 million has been raised so far.
The program therefore calls for 16 billion dollars from rich countries “to fill the immediate financing gap”, with the rest to be self-financed by middle-income countries.
Six countries – Canada, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Sweden – have reached or exceeded a level of fair funding.
Only 0.4% of the 4.7 billion COVID-19 tests carried out worldwide have been used in disadvantaged countries where, on the other hand, 10% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.