WHO admits funding gap in fight against COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted a huge gap in the funds needed to fight the Coronavirus pandemic and the funds that are actually available.

Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who disclosed during a briefing in Geneva, revealed that the UN health agency is only 10% close to funding the billions of dollars required.

Tedros, while referring to the access to Covid-19 tools said, “The coming three months present a crucial window of opportunity to scale-up the impact of the ACT Accelerator for global impact.

“However to exploit this window, we have to fundamentally scale up the way we are funding the ACT Accelerator and prioritise the use of new tools. There is a vast global gap between our ambition for the ACT Accelerator, and the amount of funds that have been committed.”

Tedros also noted that over $100 billion would be needed for the vaccines alone. He said that although the amount might appear huge, it is small when compared to the $10 trillion that had already been spent by G20 countries in fiscal stimulus to deal with the consequences of the pandemic so far.

Going further, Tedros said, “It is never too late to turn the pandemic around. The message is to “suppress, suppress, suppress.”

Also commenting on the situation, the head of WHO’s emergencies programme, Dr. Mike Ryan, said the Coronavirus is simple, brutal, and cruel.

About 20 million positive cases of the Coronavirus pandemic have been reported globally, with about 730,000 fatalities. The WHO has said that over 150 vaccines are currently in different phases of the trial.