$100 billion needed to take vaccine to all: WHO

Published : 11 Aug 2020, 13:34

Sahos Desk

The World Health Organization has said it needed at least US $100 billion for its programme that seeks to accelerate the development and manufacture of a novel Coronavirus vaccine, and ensure that it is equitably accessible to everyone. And, it has indicated, that possibly not even ten per cent of that amount has so far been realised.

In April this year, the WHO had launched Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator programme aimed at accelerating the development, production, and equitable access to tests, treatments and vaccines for the Covid-19 disease. The vaccine arm of this international collaborative initiative is called COVAX.

WHO has invited countries to join this initiative and voluntarily contribute funds to support the rapid development of vaccines, scale-up of manufacturing capacities, and strengthening of the delivery mechanisms. At a press conference on Monday, WHO director general Tedros Ghebreyesus indicated that the progress, at least on raising funds, was not satisfactory.

Through the COVAX mechanism, the WHO has been trying to get the countries to pool in their resources to support the rapid development of multiple vaccine candidates. It is hoping that at least a few of them would finally be approved for public use.

The countries that join the initiative would then have assured supplies of this vaccine.

The WHO aims to ensure the distribution of at least 2 billion doses of vaccines through the COVAX programme, mainly in the middle and low-income countries, by the end of 2021.

Hundreds of vaccines for the novel Coronavirus are being developed across the world, about 30 of which are in different stages of testing on human beings. The overwhelming view right now is that a Coronavirus vaccine would become a reality by early 2021, if not by the end of this year itself.

Hunt for coronavirus-vccine: : The story so far

More than 160 vaccine candidates in pre-clinical or clinical trials
23 of them in clinical trials

Six in final stages, phase-III of human trials

At least eight candidate vaccines being developed in India. Two of these have entered phase -II trials after completing phase-I.

Source: The Indian Express

 

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