Go-it-alone attitude dents WHO's 'global solution' to pandemic

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The world is in this pandemic together. Until it comes to money, that is.

With virtually every country around the globe turning inward as its leaders struggle to control the coronavirus at home, the World Health Organization is having trouble raising money for an international effort to develop vaccines, medicines and tests that many health experts argue is necessary to pull humanity out of the coronavirus pandemic. And they say the window of opportunity is closing.

The WHO and its partners have raised $3 billion so far, but they need at least 10 times more for the scheme to make a difference. The WHO could not say who exactly has given money, but the European Union and countries such as Norway, South Africa, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia, among others, have made pledges.

“The number one global security threat in our world today is the virus, it is our common enemy,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said during a Sept. 10 virtual meeting focused on the effort. “Yet we still continue to struggle to collectively make all decisions and devote all the resources we need to defeat it.”

Guterres linked the lack of funding to “the worrying trend of numerous parallel initiatives and nationally-focused efforts,” which he called self-defeating.

Getting more buy-in — and a lot more cash — for the plan, called the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT)-Accelerator, is the top goal of the WHO at this year’s virtual U.N. General Assembly, which started this week and continues next week with speeches from national leaders.

“The ACT-Accelerator needs $35 billion to fast-track the development, procurement and distribution of 2 billion vaccine doses, 245 million treatments and 500 million tests over the next year,” the WHO said this week.

Guterres warned that “there is real urgency in these numbers,” with $15 billion needed immediately to cover the next three months.

Otherwise, he said, “we will lose the window of opportunity to further advance research, build stocks in parallel with licensing, start procuring and delivering the new diagnostics and therapeutics and have countries prepare to optimize the new vaccines when they arrive.”

A world at home…divided

Investing a few tens of billions of dollars into vaccines and other health measures is “one of the cheapest down payments relative to your stimulus bills that will get you some of the longest term payback,” said Mark Suzman, the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is involved in the ACT-Accelerator.

But that is not happening now, mainly because leaders are grappling with the short-term needs and the short-term demands of their constituents, Suzman told POLITICO in an interview on September 11.

The U.S, which has traditionally been the top donor on global health issues, has kept its distance from WHO-led initiatives in this pandemic, saying it doesn’t trust the organization. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the world health body of helping China hide the seriousness of the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic and decided to pull the country out of it. The WHO has rejected the accusations, seen by some as a way for Trump to shift the blame for the way the pandemic has been handled in the U.S., the most hard-hit country in the world.

Suzman agreed that the U.S. opt-out has made fundraising and global cooperation tougher. Its inward focus when it comes to vaccines, for example, may be setting an example for other countries, too.

“When the U.S. makes bilateral deals and commits to the coverage of its own citizens, it's a political challenge for other countries to, you know, not seem to be doing the same for their own population,” he said.

The geopolitical confrontation between the U.S. and China has also made cooperation in the global health space more difficult, according to Suzman.

But he thinks people understand the logic behind the ACT-Accelerator, “even if the short term political challenges and incentives may not play quite in the right direction right now,” he said.

He expects things to be different in a year from now, once the eye of the storm has passed.

Getting started was the easy part

The WHO launched the Accelerator in April, with the help of the European Union Commission. Its boss, Ursula von der Leyen, hosted two global virtual events where heads of states, celebrities and organizations pledged money.

Some $3 billion were raised, which have gone toward establishing a portfolio of promising vaccine candidates, rolling out treatments that prove to be effective against the severe form of Covid-19 and proving that “game-changing, rapid diagnostics are possible,” U.N. boss Guterres said.

But the Accelerator didn’t make any more funding progress over the summer.

The WHO is not naming and shaming countries that have not contributed. When asked to provide a list of countries and organizations that have contributed so far, the WHO said that it was up to countries to make their commitments public.

Guterres said a quantum leap in funding is necessary — at least 10 times the amount fundraised so far — “to increase the chances of a global solution to get the world moving, working and prospering again.”

For that, countries need to put a bit of their domestic stimulus packages into the global effort, because traditional humanitarian and development assistance is not enough, he said.

“The ACT-Accelerator is the global solution we are looking for. Now we need to make important political choices if the world is to reap its promise.”

Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.

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