WHO & African Leaders Pin Hopes on Biden’s ‘Global COVID-19 Summit’ for ‘New Deal’ on Pandemic Response

Left-right: Strive Masiyiwa, AU COVID envoy, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, Dr John Nkengasong, Africa CDC diector

 

Link to the source article >> https://healthpolicy-watch.news/who-african-leaders-pin-hopes-on-biden-pandemic-summit-for-new-deal-on-covid-response/

After months of frustrated efforts to unlock global vaccine supplies for the African continent, WHO and African Union leaders are now pinning their hopes on US President Joe Biden’s reported plan to call heads of state to a “Global Pandemic Summit” on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened today, as a way out of the current deadlock.

Biden reportedly is circulating a plan to hold the summit on 22 September – with the aim of reaching a joint commitment to the vaccination of 70% of the world’s population by the GA session in September 2022, ensuring that “additional doses and adequate supplies are available to all countries”, according to a set of targets circulating among embassies, and obtained by the Washington Post.

To achieve that, the Biden plan for the Global COVID-19 Summit also calls for “expediting delivery of approximately 2.0 billion previous committed doses..  including by converting existing dose sharing pledges into near-term deliveries, swapping delivery dates to secure earlier delivery of doses to LIC/LMICs, and eliminating cross-border bottlenecks in the supply of vaccines and critical inputs.”

But speaking at Tuesday’s press conference following two days of meetings in Geneva, African Union and African Centers for Disease officials stressed that the era of “pledges” for vaccine donations to Africa, needs to end and investments in African vaccine manufacturing to begin, as part of any ‘New Deal’ on pandemic response in low- and middle-income (LMICs) countries.

“”We, as the African Union, are calling on a permanent structure,” said Masiyiwa, a billionaire entrepreneur and AU Special Envoy for COVID-19, “and this is something that we will be calling on to be put in place at this summit that President Biden is convening.

“We strongly believe that the pledge architecture, where countries gathered together and made pledges….  has had its day.  Let us now have a permanent structure.  Vaccine sharing is good. But we shouldn’t have to be relying on vaccine sharing, when we can come to the table, put structures in place, and then say that we also want to buy.”

Return to the list of articles