WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the 9th meeting of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator Facilitation Council – 28 February 2022

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

Your Excellency Minister Phaahla,

Your Excellency Minister Tvinnereim,

Director General Sandra Gallina,

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

Thank you for joining us today.

Last week marks one year since COVAX made its first delivery to Africa, when doses arrived in Ghana.

As you know, vaccine inequity severely restricted the number of doses COVAX was able to ship in the first half of last year.

We are now overcoming many of the supply and delivery constraints we faced last year, with almost 1.2 billion doses of vaccine delivered, and the supply outlook for this year is positive.

We must now turn our attention to addressing the crucial question of how we turn vaccines into vaccinations, how we ensure all countries have enough tests, enough oxygen to treat patients, and enough PPE to keep health workers safe.

We are far off track of achieving our shared goal of vaccinating 70% of every country’s population by the middle of this year, as well as our targets for testing and treatment.

To support our efforts to achieve our vaccination target, WHO, UNICEF and Gavi have initiated the COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership, led by Ted Chaiban, to assist government-led vaccine strategies through political engagement, delivery funding, technical assistance and surge support.

And to achieve all our targets, we are calling on all countries to fill the urgent financing gap of US$16 billion for the ACT Accelerator.

This is essential not only for saving lives and bringing the pandemic under control, but for driving a truly inclusive global recovery, which will benefit all countries.

I am grateful to South Africa and Norway for launching the campaign calling for countries to pay their ‘fair share’ to the ACT Accelerator.

I also thank the Facilitation Council’s Finance and Resource Mobilization Working Group for their work on the financing framework that underpins the fair share asks.

Today, we will hear how the ACT Accelerator has supported Kenya to scale up testing and sequencing, and Rwanda’s achievement of reaching 40% vaccine coverage by the end of last year.

These inspiring examples need to spur us forward, as there is much work still to be done.

These must be our priorities in our discussions today, and in the weeks and months ahead:

First, every country should commit to achieving vaccination, testing, treatment and PPE targets, and focus on overcoming the bottlenecks they face;

Second, higher-income countries should contribute their ‘fair share’ to the ACT Accelerator, based on the size of their economy;

Third, we need to keep equitable access at the top of the agenda of the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in April, the G20 and G7 Health Ministers meetings in May.

It’s now my honour to welcome His Excellency Minister Phaahla from South Africa. Minister, thank you for your leadership. You have the floor.

Thank you Minister, once again we deeply appreciate South Africa’s strong leadership and partnership through the pandemic.

And thank you for sharing my recent visit to South Africa. I really was very much encouraged by the progress I have seen, and if you remember, what I said during the visit was that our baby is in good hands – that’s the mRNA Hub.

What Afrigen and Biovac have already done is really excellent, and this is because of your leadership. I was also impressed to see the Stellenbosch University’s support, and see the ecosystem is really ready to support the hub.

So thank you so much again, I think this is a strategic solution for the structural problem of inequity that we’re facing, and thank you for leading on this.

I would like to assure you that WHO will continue to support you, and all partners, of course, who are engaged to make this project a success.

As you rightly said, this project is not just for South Africa, it’s for the whole continent, and even beyond, for the whole world. So thank you again for your leadership.

I’m now honoured to welcome Her Excellency Anne Beathe Tvinnereim from Norway. The Minister could not be with us in person, but has recorded the following video message.

Thank you, Minister, and thank you once again for Norway’s leadership.

Now I’m pleased to welcome Sandra Gallina, Director-General for Health and Food Safety at the European Commission.

Director-General, welcome, and you have the floor.

Thank you, Director-General. We greatly appreciate the partnership of Team Europe throughout the pandemic.

To guide us through the rest of our programme, I’ll now hand over to John-Arne Røttingen and Zane Dangor. Over to you.

Source: World Health Organization