UN launches global push to speed virus vaccine production
Baku, April 25, AZERTAC
The UN on Friday joined forces with world leaders and the private sector on an initiative to speed up development of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and ensure equal access for all, according to AFP.
"This is a landmark collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for COVID-19," World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.
"United we can fight this virus."
The event was co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
It included UN chief Antonio Guterres as a speaker, as well as global leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
"We face a global public enemy like no other," Guterres told the briefing. "A world free of COVID-19 requires the most massive public health effort in history."
He stressed the need to ensure that any diagnostic tests developed to detect the new virus, any drugs produced to treat it, and any vaccine made to prevent it should be provided to all of those in need.
"The world needs the development, production and equitable delivery of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics," Guterres said.
"Not a vaccine or treatments for one country or one region or one-half of the world, but a vaccine and treatment that are affordable, safe, effective, easily-administered and universally available, for everyone, everywhere," he said.
"None of us is safe until all of us are safe... COVID-19 anywhere is a threat to people everywhere."
There were few concrete details divulged during the event on how the wide range of partners would roll out the initiative.
Von der Leyen, however, announced that the EU and its partners were preparing to organise a "worldwide pledging marathon" with an event on May 4 aimed at raising 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) for initial funding for developing diagnostics, treatments and vaccines against COVID-19.
"We need to develop as soon as possible a vaccine, produce it and deploy it to every single corner of the world," she said, also stressing the need to "ramp up work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment."
"The response to this pandemic can only be global."
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