WHO Says It Needs More Money to Fight COVID-19; Require Billions of Dollars

Fighting Covid-19 requires a lot of money.

Singapore itself has committed S$92.9 billion in 2020 to soften the economic impact of Covid-19.

And now, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is appealing for more funds so that they can fight effectively against Covid-19.

WHO Says It Needs More Money to Fight COVID-19; Require Billions of Dollars

On 10 Aug 2020, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the world that there is a “vast global gap” between the amount needed to fight Covid-19 and the amount that is committed.

The fight, he says, requires a lot of money and the WHO is only “10%” into the billions of dollars needed.

Since December 2019, more than 19.92 million people have been infected, he pointed out, and over 720,000 people have died.

Making Covid-19 vaccines, alone, requires at least US$100 billion, he claims.

The “Best Time” For ACT Accelerator

He says that in order for the fight to be effective, the WHO needs to put in more money into their Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator.

The next three months is the best window for the ACT accelerator to make an impact.

“However to exploit this window, we have to fundamentally scale up the way we are funding the ACT Accelerator and prioritise the use of new tools. There is a vast global gap between our ambition for the ACT accelerator, and the amount of funds that have been committed.”

He added while the situation seems dire, he saw “green rays of hope”.

The message he wants to give to governments around the world is “suppress, suppress and suppress”.

What Is The ACT Accelerator?

Based on the brochure available on WHO’s website, the ACT Accelerator seems to be “chim speak” for charity work.

Basically, the accelerator aims to give all countries equal access to Covid-19 tools and resources that can help fight the virus.

The WHO says that there is significant progress when it comes to developing the tools needed for the fight but not all countries will get them based on “past lessons”.

This is “unacceptable” to the WHO, which decided to let all countries access the different tools available through the accelerator.

They also made an additional point in their brochure.

Based on the nature of Covid-19, as long as one person is at risk of Covid-19, it will never disappear because it’s highly infectious.

So it’s in the world’s advantage to want to stamp this out as fast as possible too.

A simple example is this: 

Country A’s people always come into country B to work and contribute to their economy; however, country B is rich enough to be protected while A isn’t.

So while country B manages to contain Covid-19, it still can’t allow country A’s people to enter and grow B’s economy because they haven’t dealt with Covid-19.

US Pulled Funding From WHO

President Donald Trump pulled US funding from WHO back in Apr 2020.

He said that the WHO has made “missteps” during the initial months of Covid-19, which led to the situation that the world is in today.

The US is also reportedly in the process of formally withdrawing from WHO.

To find out more about the WHO, you might want to check this article out.