Global Health Summit: pharmaceutical companies pledge more vaccines for poor countries. Bill Gates, “share doses and money”

“Two things are needed today: to share vaccine doses and to share money”: Bill Gates, too, spoke at the ongoing Global Health Summit today, as the President of the foundation that bears his name. Only 4% of the vaccine doses available have reached low- and middle-income countries, the American tycoon denounced, calling for fairer access to vaccines for all. Four European Commissioners, Stella Kyriakides, Paolo Gentiloni, Janez Lenarcic and Jutta Urpilainen, also spoke at the Summit with a message: what the EU does, is done to the benefit of the rest of the world too. This is the case, for example, with the over €4 billion invested in research, Kyriakides recalled, with the initiatives supporting fiscal and debt reduction in African countries to avoid a debt crisis, Gentiloni added, and with the aid that the EU has made available in 2020 and continues to make available to the rest of the world. The pre-summit was also attended by the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson&Johnson. The CEO of Pfizer announced that two billion doses would be made available to low- and middle-income countries in 2021: 1 billion “non-profit” doses will go to the poorest countries and 1 billion low-cost doses to middle-income countries. All CEOs have pledged billions of doses to the global GAVI Alliance by 2021, and efforts to increase productivity and technology transfer to allow the production of vaccines locally.
Sarah Numico