UN Receives $1b In Pledges To Increase Access To Tools

The United Nations and its partners have received $1 billion dollars in pledge as governments, private sector, civil society and international organisations renewed their commitments to support Access to COVID-19 Tools- (ACT).

UN Secretary General António Guterres, who announced this during a media briefing yesterday, said almost $1 billion in new financing has been committed to the initiative, which, he said, is the world’s most comprehensive multilateral end-to-end solution to the pandemic.

The ACT-Accelerator was co-launched by the World Health Organisation (WHO), European Commission, France and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in May 2020.

It, however, needs an additional US$35 billion to realise its goals of producing 2 billion vaccine doses, 245 million treatments and 500 million tests.

“The new commitments to the initiative are welcome and will be leveraged to catalyse further funding to continue the ACT-Accelerator’s groundbreaking work,” the UN secretary-general said.

Most urgently, the ACT-Accelerator requires US$15 billion to support immediate capacity-building – for research and development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery systems – by the end of the year,” Gutteres said.

“I commend the extraordinary international effort to address a humanitarian crisis like no other in our lifetimes,” he said, adding that more efforts must be made to further deepen the remarkable progress so far.

According to him, it is in every country’s national and economic self-interest to work together to massively expand access to tests and treatments, and to support a vaccine as a global public good.

“The ACT-Accelerator – including its COVAX Facility – is the vehicle to get us there. Investing in the ACT-Accelerator will accelerate every country’s own recovery,” Gutteres added.