Geneva/Washington/New York, June 1 – Leaders of the world’s four largest health, finance and trade organizations are jointly urging governments to invest US$ 50 billion in order to generate US$ 9 trillion in global economic returns by 2025. They said such an investment would lead to an accelerated end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO), Kristalina Georgieva of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), David Malpass of the World Bank Group and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of World Trade Organization (WTO) said In a statement published by newspapers around the world that the US $50 billion in new investment is needed to increase manufacturing capacity, supply, trade flows, and delivery, which would accelerate the equitable distribution of diagnostics, oxygen, treatments, medical supplies and vaccines. This injection would also give a major boost to economic growth around the world.
“By now it has become abundantly clear there will be no broad-based recovery without an end to the health crisis. Access to vaccination is key to both,” the leaders said.
“There has been impressive progress on the vaccination front. Scientists have come up with multiple vaccines in record time. Unprecedented public and private financing has supported vaccine research, development and manufacturing scale-up. But a dangerous gap between richer and poorer nations persists.”
“At an estimated $50 billion, it will bring the pandemic to an end faster in the developing world, reduce infections and loss of lives, accelerate the economic recovery, and generate some $9 trillion in additional global output by 2025. “
“Increasing our ambition and vaccinating more people faster: WHO and its COVAX partners have set a goal of vaccinating approximately 30 per cent of the population in all countries by the end of 2021,” said the four leaders. “But this can reach even 40 per cent through other agreements and surge investment, and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022.”
The statement said US$ 35 billion of the US$ 50 billion could be in the form of grants as the G20 governments have shown willingness to provide about US$ 22 billion in additional funding for 2021 to the ACT-Accelerator, the WHO’s main program for vaccines.
The statement said an additional US$ 13 billion are needed to boost vaccine supply in 2022 and further scale up testing, therapeutics and surveillance. The remainder of the overall financing plan—around US$15 billion—could come from national governments supported by multilateral development banks, including the World Bank’s US$12 billion financial facility for vaccination.
“Investing US$ 50 billion to end the pandemic is potentially the best use of public money we will see in our lifetimes,” the statement said. “It will pay a huge development dividend and boost growth and well-being globally. But the window of opportunity is closing fast — the longer we wait, the costlier it becomes, in human suffering and in economic losses.”
“On behalf of our four organizations, today we announce a new commitment to work togetherto scale up needed financing, boost manufacturing and ensure the smooth flow of vaccines and raw materials across borders to dramatically increase vaccine access to support the health response and economic recovery, and to bring needed hope”.
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