The World Health Organisation has appealed to the governments and private sector donors to help raise 31 billion dollars in the next 12 months to develop medicines against coronavirus pandemic.
The WHO is working with a large coalition of drug-development, funding and distribution organisations under what it calls the ACT-Accelerator Hub. Under this initiative, the WHO intends to develop and deliver 500 million COVID-19 tests and 245 million courses of new treatment to low and middle income countries by mid-2021. The Accelerator Hub was launched in April. It brings together governments, health organizations, businesses, scientists, philanthropists and civil society under a single platform.
WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom said that effective medicines, diagnostics and therapeutics were needed at unprecedented quantities and at unprecedented speed for brining coronaviris under control.
Chief Scientist at WHO Dr Soumya Swaminathan pointed out that said a safe and effective vaccine was the only way to prevent further spread and transmission of the virus. Noting that it could normally take up to ten years to develop and manufacture a vaccine, she said that they were aiming to shorten the timeline. She also said that about 200 candidates are at some stage of clinical development and about 15 of them are actually now in human clinical trials.
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