The ACT Accelerator initiative, created by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate vaccines, diagnoses and treatments against COVID-19 and ensure that they are affordable worldwide, requires funding of $ 31.3 billion, program officials announced today, Friday.
The program has only received $ 3.4 billion, so it needs an additional $ 27.9 billion, and $ 13.7 billion urgently., explained the main ACT managers at a conference chaired by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We need the active collaboration of governments, industry, civil society and communities,” said the Ethiopian expert, who concluded that “for tools to fight against COVID-19 to be truly effective, they need an essential ingredient, such as solidarity.”
The initiative has set among its main objectives the shipment until mid-2021 of 500 million tests and 245 million treatments to developing countries.
It also projects the production of 2 billion doses of immunization against COVID-19, half of them destined for low- and middle-income countries, by the end of next year, although this goal depends on the success of some of the more than 200 laboratories looking for a vaccine.
The vaccine division requires an investment of $ 18.1 billion, more than half of the total, said WHO chief scientific research Soumya Swaminathan, who recalled that 15 of the candidate vaccines are already in the clinical phase, that is, that they are being tested in humans.
The ACT Accelerator was launched on April 24 at a ceremony involving heads of state and government from Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as by entities such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Its main purpose is to guarantee the availability of drugs, tests and vaccines against the pandemic at affordable prices by all countries, considering them public goods, if possible not subject to a license, that can be produced and distributed in all regions of the world. .
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