Your Excellency Daniele Franco,
Your Excellency Roberto Speranza,
Honourable Ministers,
Thank you for the opportunity to join you today.
I’m sure that when this meeting was first planned, we all hoped the pandemic would be over. It’s not.
Driven by the Delta variant, cases and deaths are once again rising globally, including in many of your own countries.
Although vaccines save lives, they do not stop transmission, which is why every country must continue to use every tool, including tailored public health and social measures, in combination with tests, treatments and vaccines.
Yesterday, WHO and our partners published the new Strategic Plan and Budget for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, with an ask of 23.4 billion U.S. dollars to make sure tests, treatments and vaccines go where they are needed most.
36% of the world’s population is now fully vaccinated. But in Africa, it’s only 6%.
Thank you for recognizing the importance of WHO’s targets to vaccinate at least 40 percent of the population of all countries by the end of 2021, and 70 percent by mid-2022.
To achieve our 40% target, we need an additional 550 million doses. That’s about 10 days’ production. As my friend Gordon Brown says, more than half that number is sitting unused in your countries, and could be immediately deployed.
It’s true that a small group of countries have some limitations, which we are working to address.
But for the majority of countries, it’s simply a matter of insufficient supply.
Overcoming supply barriers is the central focus of the Multilateral Leaders Task Force on Scaling COVID-19 Tools – and I thank Kristalina, David and Ngozi for their partnership and leadership.
But we need your help.
We need those countries that have already reached the 40% target to swap your vaccine delivery schedules with COVAX;
We need those countries that have made generous pledges to donate vaccines to fulfil those pledges urgently;
We need those countries that produce vaccines to allow free cross-border flow of finished vaccines and raw materials, and to facilitate sharing of know-how, technology, licenses and IP;
And we need manufacturers to prioritize and fulfil their contracts with COVAX and AVAT as a matter of urgency.
Even as we fight to end this pandemic, we must learn the lessons it is teaching us and prepare for the next one.
It’s a biological certainty that at some point, another virus will emerge that we simply can’t contain.
We can take the steps now to prepare for that virus, to detect it and to respond rapidly when it arrives.
So what do we need?
First, governance.
High-level threats need high-level political engagement, so we urge you to support the establishment of a Health Threats Financing Board.
Likewise, we seek your support for a legally-binding international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response, at the Special Session of the World Health Assembly next month.
Second, financing.
We support the idea of a new international financing facility for pandemic preparedness and response, built on existing financial institutions.
And third, we need a strengthened, empowered and sustainably financed WHO at the centre of the global health architecture.
Excellencies, let me leave you with three concrete requests:
Fully fund the ACT Accelerator;
Solve the vaccine crisis;
And invest today in a safer tomorrow.
I thank you.