Alliance pledges to make vaccine widely available

Poor countries must not lose, conference told

OTTAWA • Canada joined the global community Monday in helping to raise $11 billion toward a COVID-19 vaccine, amid promises to make it available for all.

That hasn’t happened with past outbreaks, including the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, where richer countries got a vaccine first at the expense of poorer ones.

A viable vaccine must be available and affordable for all countries, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Monday, while Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said victory over the virus will take more than great minds in laboratories.

“It will also take a firm commitment to multilateral institutions, and it will take resources,” said Michel.

The pledging conference is partially a response to the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to pause funding to the World Health Organization because of concerns that it initially mismanaged the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

“We must learn the lessons from the fight against HIV and swine flu where the narrow self-interests of corporations and governments meant vaccines and treatments were too expensive or arrived too late,” Anna Marriott, head of Oxfam’s health policy, said in a statement.

“President Trump remains isolated and antagonistic to an international collaboration aimed at saving lives of people across the globe. No one individual, community, or country can overcome this crisis alone — we must all work together.”

Britain’s envoy to Canada says the search for and eventual distribution of a new COVID-19 vaccine can’t be a competitive process that deprives people in poorer countries.

“Right at the heart of that is the discovery and effective dissemination of an effective vaccine — it has to be an effort of collaboration rather than an effort of competition ,” Susan le J eu ned’ Allegeershecque said in an interview Monday.

Britain and the EU co-hosted Monday’s virtual pledging conference to raise more than $11 billion toward finding a vaccine.

Typically, countries with the weakest health systems find themselves priced out of access to some key medicines and vaccines, said the humanitarian adviser to Doctors Without Borders.

“We have a lot of concerns that promising COVID-19 vaccines could be priced out of reach,” said Jason Nickerson, also an adjunct professor in the law faculty at the University of Ottawa.

Any promising COVID-19 vaccine should be seen as a public good, rather than a financial commodity, he said.

“There’s a certain reality that in order to ensure broad access and truly global access, we can’t do business in the way that it’s been done for medicines and vaccines today,” Nickerson said.

Britain is hosting the replenishment conference for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, viewed as a key partner in making sure a new vaccine reaches the people who need it. The international organization, which has immunized 760 million children since 2000, is seeking more than $8 billion in new five-year replenishment at a conference in June.

In his address, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau highlighted that Canada has already promised $850 million to the international effort to fight the pandemic.

When asked why Canada didn’t offer new money today, he said the event was “only the beginning” in the effort to find, manufacture and distribute a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

“We know that the safety of our own citizens depends on how we keep people around the world safe,” Trudeau said at the conference that took place online.

Trudeau also spoke with Bill and Melinda Gates last week about the need to support the event.