SWITZERLAND – The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged rich countries to contribute US$16 billion as soon as possible to its plan to defeat Covid-19.

According to the World Health Organization, the rapid cash injection into its Access to Covid Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) could end Covid as a global health emergency this year.

The WHO-led ACT-A aims to develop, produce, procure, and distribute pandemic-fighting tools such as vaccines, tests, treatments, and personal protective equipment.

ACT-A gave birth to the Covax facility, which was created to ensure that poorer countries could access vaccines in the future, correctly predicting that richer countries would hog doses coming off the production lines.

The ACT-Accelerator hub also encompasses the COVAX initiative which aims at equitable distribution of vaccines, especially to lower- and middle-income countries. COVAX delivered its 1 billionth dose in a shipment to Rwanda in the middle of January.

As a result, the scheme seeks US$16 billion in upfront funding from wealthy nations “to close the immediate financing gap,” with the remainder to be self-funded by middle-income countries.

The ACT-A program required US$23.4 billion for the fiscal year October 2021-September 2022, but only US$800 million has been raised thus far.

Omicron push

The rapid spread of the Omicron variant, according to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, makes it even more critical to ensure that tests, treatments, and vaccines are distributed equitably.

If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-Accelerator costs, the partnership can support low- and middle-income countries to overcome low Covid-19 vaccination levels, weak testing, and medicine shortages,” he said in a statement.

Science gave us the tools to fight Covid-19; if they are shared globally in solidarity, we can end Covid-19 as a global health emergency this year.”

During the pandemic, only 0.4 percent of the 4.7 billion Covid tests administered globally were used in low-income countries.

In the meantime, only 10% of people in those countries have received at least one vaccine dose.

According to the WHO, the vast inequity not only costs lives and harms economies, but it also risks the emergence of new, more dangerous variants that could rob current tools of their effectiveness and set even highly vaccinated populations back months.

President Ramaphosa’s call

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who co-chairs the ACT-A facilitation council, has urged world leaders to step up in solidarity, meet their fair shares, and help reclaim lives from the pandemic, while noting that inequitable access to Covid vaccines, tests, and treatments, is simply prolonging the pandemic.

ACT-A has developed a new “fair share” financing model that determines how much each of the world’s wealthy countries should contribute based on the size of their national economy and what they would gain from a faster global economic and trade recovery.

Only six countries met or exceeded their fair share commitments in the 2020-21 ACT-A budget: Canada, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden.

Ramaphosa and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, his fellow co-chair, have written to 55 capitals — all high-income countries, G20 upper middle-income nations, and two other middle-income states — outlining their “fair share” and encouraging them to cough up.

The plan would require the United States to contribute the most, at US$6 billion.

Public health doesn’t end at our borders. All of us are at risk and all of us must respond to turn the tide. Let’s get this done,” said US Health Secretary Xavier Becerra.

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