THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged rich countries to pay their fair share of the money needed for its plan to conquer Covid-19 by contributing US$16 billion (RM66 billion) as a matter of urgency.

The rapid cash injection into WHO’s Access to Covid Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) can end the virus as a global health emergency this year, it added.

The WHO-led ACT-A is aimed at developing, producing, procuring and distributing tools to tackle the pandemic: vaccines, tests, treatments and personal protective equipment.

ACT-A gave birth to the Covax facility, designed to ensure poorer countries can access eventual vaccines, correctly predicting that richer nations will hog doses coming off the production lines.

Covax delivered its billionth vaccine dose in mid-January.

ACT-A needs US$23.4 billion for its programme for the year October 2021-September 2022, but only US$800 million has been raised so far.

The scheme therefore wants US$16 billion up front from wealthy nations “to close the immediate financing gap”, with the rest to be self-funded by middle-income countries.

Omicron impetus

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the rapid spread of the Omicron variant makes it all the more urgent to ensure tests, treatments and vaccines are equitably distributed.

“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-A costs, the partnership can support low- and middle-income countries to overcome low coronavirus 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.”

Just 0.4% of the 4.7 billion tests administered globally during the pandemic have been used in low-income countries.

Only 10% of people in those nations have received at least one vaccine dose.

WHO said the vast inequity is not only costing lives and hurting economies, but also risking the emergence of new, more dangerous variants that can rob current tools of their effectiveness and set even highly vaccinated populations back by many months. – AFP, February 9, 2022.