As the US president, Donald Trump declared he was withdrawing the country’s support for the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested a further $150m in the global response to COVID-19.
The latest donation brings the total the philanthropic organisation has given to $250m.
This donation is not a small sum considering the fact that the Gates Foundation is also the second biggest supporter of the WHO, following the United States.
“We have a responsibility to meet this global crisis with global solidarity.” said Foundation co-chair Melinda Gates ahead of the announcement.
“In addition to contributing to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, these funds will support efforts against Covid-19 in low-and-middle-income countries, where local leaders and healthcare workers are doing heroic work to protect vulnerable communities and slow the spread of the disease,” she said.
Four areas are included in the Gates Foundation’s latest pledge, but perhaps the most pressing is the need to develop products, such as vaccines and reliable treatments.
“It’s very clear that this is a global pandemic and the only solutions will work if they are globally applied,” Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation told The Telegraph.
“In the end game, we need everyone on the planet to be vaccinated. But that is more than a year away. So in the meantime we’re looking at what we can do to minimise the loss of life and socio-economic destruction.”
A vaccine for the coronavirus is still 12 and 18 months away, according to most estimates.
But some experts are concerned that the actual implementation of a global inoculation programme may take much longer to roll out, and that some countries are failing to prepare sustainable solutions in the meantime.
