The United Nations Children’s Fund has disclosed that it would be needing US$ 16 billion in grant funding to effectively contain COVID-19 in low and middle-income countries.
The agency made the announcement on Wednesday in Geneva through a statement titled, ‘ACT-Accelerator calls for fair share-based financing of US$ 23 billion to end pandemic as global emergency in 2022’.
The UNICEF said that the move was in line with vital steps being taken towards ending the pandemic as a global emergency in 2022.
According to UNICEF, world leaders will move to end the pandemic as a global emergency in 2022 by funding the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a partnership of leading agencies that is providing low and middle-income countries with tests, treatments, vaccines, and personal protective equipment.
The statement read, “With a significant proportion of the global population still unable to get vaccinated, tested or treated, US$ 16 billion in grant funding is urgently required from governments to fund the work of the ACT-Accelerator agencies.
“This investment will allow them to procure essential tools to fight COVID-19 and provide them to low- and middle-income countries.
“The ACT-Accelerator is calling for the support of higher-income countries, at a time when vast global disparities in access to COVID-19 tools persist. Over 4.7 billion COVID-19 tests have been administered globally since the beginning of the pandemic.
“However, only about 22 million tests have been administered in low-income countries, comprising only 0.4% of the global total. Only 10% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose.
“This massive inequity not only costs lives, but it also hurts economies and risks the emergence of new, more dangerous variants that could rob current tools of their effectiveness and set even highly-vaccinated populations back many months.”
The UNICEF added that closing the US$ 16 billion gap facing the ACT-Accelerator will enable the partnership to drive in-country rollouts to get vaccines into arms, create a Pandemic Vaccine Pool of 600 million doses.
Others are to support community engagement and cover ancillary costs for donations – contributing to countries’ national vaccination objectives towards the global target of 70% coverage in all countries by mid-2022, among others
Reacting to the development, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said: “The rapid spread of Omicron makes it even more urgent to ensure tests, treatments and vaccines are distributed equitably globally.
“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-Accelerator costs, the partnership can support low- and middle-income countries to overcome low COVID-19 vaccination levels, weak testing, and medicine shortages. Science gave us the tools to fight COVID-19; if they are shared globally in solidarity, we can end COVID-19 as a global health emergency this year.”
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