The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to fight against the COVID-19 infection. On Friday, the next announced measure will be a “landmark collaboration” to accelerate development of safe, effective drugs, tests and anti-virus vaccines.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the most important things now are prevention, diagnose and treatment COVID-19. The new WHO’s initiative aimed at making technologies against the novel pathogen “accessible to everyone who needs them, worldwide”.
WHO boss said, the initiative anticipates the partnership and cooperation with international donors, but gave no further details.
According to the official statement released on Thursday, The Geneva-based UN body the vaccine development is a top priority. Actually, the GAVI vaccine alliance, Gates Foundation and Global Fund are among traditional large donors to the UN agency, in addition to its 194 member states, Reuters said.
It is the right time to accelerate R&D, production of anti-coronavirus vaccine
Earlier, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has shared his plans to announce an initiative to accelerate the research, development and production of antivirus vaccines. Another important issue is the design mechanisms for equitable distribution- the UN body is committed to ensuring that as drugs and vaccines are shared equitably across the globe.
“While we’re looking for vaccines, unless we break the barriers to equitable distribution of the products, whether it’s vaccines or therapeutics, we will have a problem, so we need to address the problem ahead of time,” WHO chief said and stressed that there should not be a divide between the haves and the have-nots.
The WHO initiative is expected to include a stockpile for use in poor countries. The bitter lessons from 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic show that there were bottlenecks in regulatory processes and vaccine yields were lower than expected, a subsequent WHO review found.
