Shri Ram Shaw
NEW DELHI
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis and it has to be met with an unprecedented global response. To accelerate the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for the dreaded disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) has united with many partners to launch the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or the ACT Accelerator.
But, this landmark collaboration is still miles away from success as the WHO-led global response to Covid-19 needs $31.3 billion for therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics over the next 12 months, including two billion doses of vaccines. The money would go to the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator, or ACT-Accelerator, a groundbreaking global collaboration initiated in April to accelerate development, production, and equitable access to Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. It was set up in response to a call from G20 leaders in March and launched by the WHO, EC, France and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in April 2020.
The ACT-Accelerator is not a decision-making body or a new organization, but works to speed up collaborative efforts among existing organizations to end the pandemic. It is a framework for collaboration that has been designed to bring key players around the table with the goal of ending the pandemic as quickly as possible by reducing COVID-19 mortality and severe disease through the accelerated development, equitable allocation, and scaled up delivery of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, thereby protecting health systems and restoring societies and economies in the near term.
Its members share a commitment to ensure all people have access to all the tools needed to defeat COVID-19 and to work with unprecedented levels of partnership to achieve it. The ACT-Accelerator has four areas of work: diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines and the health system connector.
The consolidated investment case calls for US$31.3 billion over the next 12 months. US$3.4 billion has been contributed to date, resulting in a funding gap of US$27.9 billion, of which $13.7 billion is urgently needed. Pillar plans show a path to the accelerated development, equitable allocation, and scaled up delivery of 500 million tests to low-and middle-income countries (LMIC’s) by mid-2021, 245 million courses of treatments to LMICs by mid-2021, and 2 billion vaccine doses, of which 1 billion will be purchased for LMICs, by the end of 2021.
‘‘We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity. Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody. Our shared commitment is to ensure all people have access to all the tools to prevent, detect, treat and defeat COVID-19. No country and no organization can do this alone. The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator brings together the combined power of several organizations to work with speed and scale,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General at the launch of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator recently. The pandemic had already infected more than 10 million people worldwide, including more than 500,000 deaths.
