The WHO yesterday urged rich countries to pay their fair share of the money needed for its plan to conquer COVID-19 by contributing US$16 billion as a matter of urgency.
The rapid cash injection into its Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) could finish off COVID-19 as a global health emergency this year, the WHO said.
The WHO-led ACT-A is aimed at developing, producing, procuring and distributing tools to tackle the pandemic: vaccines, tests, treatments and personal protective equipment (PPE).
Photo: Reuters
ACT-A gave birth to the COVAX facility, designed to ensure that poorer countries could access eventual vaccines, correctly predicting that richer nations would hog doses coming off the production lines.
By the middle of last month, COVAX had delivered more than 1 billion vaccine doses.
ACT-A needed US$23.4 billion for its program for the year from October last year to September, but only US$800 million has so far been raised.
The scheme therefore wants US$16 billion up front from wealthy nations to “close the immediate financing gap,” with the rest to be self-funded by middle-income countries.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 made it all the more urgent to ensure that tests, treatments and vaccines are distributed equitably.
“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-A 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.”
Just 0.4 percent of the 4.7 billion COVID-19 tests administered globally during the pandemic have been used in low-income countries, while only 10 percent of people in those nations have received at least one vaccine dose.
ACT-A has come up with a new “fair share” financing model on 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 recovery of the global economy and trade.
For the 2020-2021 budget, only six countries — Canada, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Sweden — met or exceeded what would have been their fair share.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, cochair of the ACT-A facilitation council, said that inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments is prolonging the pandemic.
“I urge my fellow leaders to step up in solidarity, meet their fair shares and help reclaim our lives from this virus,” he said.
Ramaphosa and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, his fellow cochair, 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 pay up.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS