Instead of fighting back the COVID-19 pandemic individually, the global leaders have come forward to join hands to make sure they have a vaccine developed very soon to combat the infection under the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator program, the World Health Organization announced on Friday.
While leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French supremo Emmanuel Macron, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and others have willingly agreed to the $8 billion collaboration to fight back corona, U.S. President Donald Trump did not give his consent to the initiative yet.
“Although the United States was not in attendance at the meeting in question, there should be no doubt about our continuing determination to lead on global health matters, including the current COVID crisis,” a U.S. spokesperson told Reuters via an email. “We remain deeply concerned about the WHO’s effectiveness, given that its gross failures helped fuel the current pandemic,” he further added raising the doubts of the nation against WHO. The spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva indicated that the nation would not be involved in this collaboration.
On the other hand, the rest of the world leaders who are willing to fight back the virus collectively along with WHO have agreed not only to the development of the vaccine but also ensured its equal access to all parts of the globe.
“We are facing a common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the virtual ACT Accelerator launch meeting, co-hosted by Macron, philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, on Friday. “Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen.”
The new program is a collaboration between the WHO and governments willing to participate in the initiative along with non-profit organizations and industry players. Besides France, Germany, and South Africa, the leaders from Great Britain, Rwanda, Spain, Malaysia, Italy, Finland, Costa Rica, and Saudi Arabia also joined the call and promised to work together to support the campaign and ensure the globe is free from COVID-19 pandemic situation.