Rich countries plan to prevent future epidemics

Leaders of the G-7 alliance of seven industrialized nations have finalized a plan to prevent a future global epidemic like the coronavirus epidemic destroying lives and livelihoods. However, the UN Secretary-General has called for doubling vaccine production to ensure its equitable distribution.

The announcement at the alliance’s summit at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, on the southwestern tip of England, has been described as the Carbis Bay Declaration on Health. The plan includes reducing the deadline for diagnosis, treatment, and vaccine innovation and approval to 100 days, strengthening the global network to monitor the emergence of potential infectious diseases, enhancing the capability of genome sequencing, reforming and strengthening the World Health Organization. In the declaration, this system of surveillance of infectious diseases is called ‘Pandemic Radar.’ The announcement also calls for establishing an animal vaccine innovation and production center at The Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom to control animal-borne diseases before they spread to humans. The organization will be funded by the UK Government and the Melinda French Gates Foundation.

The conference announced plans to provide 100 million doses of the vaccine to developing countries by next year. Of these 100 million doses, the United States has announced 50 million and the United Kingdom 100 million doses ahead of the summit. Health experts have previously warned that it could take up to 2024 to complete vaccinations around the world. However, the G-7 meeting has called for the world to be vaccinated by next year, 2022.

According to Johns Hopkins University in the United States, more than 1.7 billion people worldwide have been infected with corona. More than 37 lakh of them have died. Experts say that vaccinating 70 percent of the population would reduce the virus’s ability to cause harm or gain so-called complex immunity.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the G-7 plan but said more was needed to tackle the crisis. He warned that if people in developing countries could not be vaccinated quickly, different coronaviruses could be transmitted, and the virus could become resistant to new vaccines. He also emphasized the need for special financial assistance, considering the wartime economy.

So far, about 2.5 billion vaccines have been produced, more than one-third of which have been purchased by G-7 countries, whose combined population is only 13 percent of the world’s population. In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa has received less than 2 percent of the vaccine. UNICEF has called on G-7 leaders to provide additional vaccines in their collection to these developing countries on an urgent basis.

Ahead of the official announcement, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown cautioned that the G8 plan was not enough. According to him, to make the world risk-free by 2022, its supply to developing countries will increase significantly in the next few months. To achieve this, new production capacity is required, and effective measures must be taken to supply it to every continent. The world cannot be made safer by the surplus of the western countries or by waiting for them this summer and the following autumn. He called on the G-7 countries to provide at least 1.6 billion US dollars this year and another 3 billion US dollars next year.

Liz Wallace, head of the UK’s anti-poverty organization One, said the work of sharing the vaccine was not in a hurry. However, it needs to happen now.

The leaders of Australia, South Africa, and South Korea and the UN Secretary-General took part in special talks with the leaders of the G7 countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada. And the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, took part in the video connection. In addition, the head of the World Health Organization, the IMF, the head of the World Bank also took part in the video connection.

So today, the summit will end with the announcement of the manifesto. However, the final manifesto discusses whether there will be any further steps, including financial investment, to tackle the epidemic. Without it, the outcome of the summit could be called into question.