Vaccination against COVID is a global public good!
We must address two challenges at the same time. The first is the immediate response to the crisis. The second is to prepare, as of today, for the future, and to make sure that, together, we will be ready to address similar pandemics in the future.
Universal access to Covid vaccines is not only a moral imperative. It is a necessity for global health security. With the WHO, our European partners, @CyrilRamaphosa, we launched the ACT-Accelerator last year, co-chaired today by South-Africa.
We established COVAX to make sure that the most vulnerable countries would have access to vaccines. But it is not enough. The battle is far from over. The global vaccination divide remains unacceptable, and the gap must be closed.
France has decided to share more than 30 million doses with COVAX to speed up vaccination in low-income countries, as part of a European initiative. We are glad to see that other countries are following.
Africa requires 20% of all vaccines, but only produces 1% of the current vaccines globally. This situation is neither fair nor sustainable. We must build stronger production capabilities. This is the meaning of the initiative on the manufacturing of vaccines we are launching.
I call on global vaccines, therapeutics and test-producers to engage in licensing agreements so as to deploy their innovations throughout the world. Let’s do it together!
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