Bill Gates takes a jab at epidemics
SWITZERLAND: A global coalition to create new vaccines for emerging infectious diseases has been launched, with the ambitious aim of protecting the world from future epidemics.
Announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday, the initiative has an initial investment of nearly US$500 million (NZ$700m) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Britain’s Wellcome Trust and the governments of Japan, Norway and Germany.
The partnership will be called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI.
It grew out of the lessons learned from the world’s woeful lack of preparedness for the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people and caused at least US$2.2 billion in economic losses in the three hardest-hit countries.
As a result of that and the Zika epidemic in the Americas, a global consensus has steadily grown among an array of governments, public health leaders, scientists and vaccine industry executives that a new system is needed to guard against future health threats.
Global health experts welcomed the initiative, saying it would complement efforts already under way.
The United States is not providing funding for CEPI but offering expertise. Officials took part in the planning discussions, and ‘‘while we are not a formal partner to CEPI, we foresee synergies between our approaches’’, US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority director Rick Bright said.
One such area was developing the most efficient technology for biodefence and infectious disease response, he said.
Rebecca Katz, director of Georgetown University’s Centre for Global Health Science and Security, said she expected the new coalition to ‘‘add muchneeded resources to a hard problem’’ and not detract from other efforts’ funding and resources.
CEPI initially plans to target three viruses that have known potential to cause serious epidemics and which can be transmitted from animals to humans. They are:
MERS, a deadly respiratory virus first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012 that can be spread by camels and is now in 27 countries, including the United States;
Lassa fever, an acute viral illness mainly found in West Africa and spread by rats;
Nipah, a newly emerging infection initially identified in 1999 in Malaysia and Singapore. During a Nipah outbreak there among pig farmers and people with close contact with pigs, nearly 300 people were infected and more than 100 died.
Each virus is among the World Health Organisation’s priority pathogens. Few or no medical countermeasures exist to combat them.
The current system for vaccine development is in crisis, health experts say, because it is a costly, complicated and labour-intensive process that prioritises therapeutics with the biggest possible market.
CEPI hopes to develop two vaccine candidates for each of the target diseases. Officials said they did not choose Ebola and Zika because considerable research was already under way on them. ’’The last thing we would like to do is duplicate efforts,’’ said Trevor Mundel, president of the Gates Foundation’s global health division.
Officials said they had raised US$460m, almost half of their US$1b target for the first five years. They are now seeking proposals from researchers and companies, and expect to announce which will be funded by mid-year. They are also calling for other governments and organisations to help complete fundraising by the end of the year.
Bill Gates has said his biggest worry is a pathogen, more infectious than Ebola, for which the world is totally unprepared.
‘‘The ability to rapidly develop and deliver vaccines when new ‘unknown’ diseases emerge offers our best hope to outpace outbreaks, save lives and avert disastrous economic consequences.’’
Wellcome director Jeremy Farrar was among those who first proposed a global vaccine development fund in mid-2015.
He said CEPI’s initial US$1b investment goal paled in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars in costs from epidemics, starting with the 2003 SARS outbreak.
‘‘Vaccines can protect us, but we’ve done too little to develop them as an insurance policy,’’ Farrar said. – Washington Post