Bill Gates said efforts began two decades ago to tackle the global HIV / AIDS crisis.
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called for COVID-19 drugs and a possible vaccine to be made available to the countries and people who need it most, not the “highest bidder”, saying the use of market would prolong the deadly pandemic.
“If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of the people and places where they are most needed, we will have a longer, more unfair and more deadly pandemic,” Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, said in a video released Saturday at a COVID-19 virtual conference hosted by the International AIDS Society.
“We need leaders to make these difficult decisions about distribution based on equity, not just market factors.”
With hundreds of vaccine projects underway and governments in Europe and the United States investing billions of dollars in research, testing and manufacturing, there is concern that richer countries may pick up promising drugs against the new coronavirus, leaving developing countries empty-handed.
The European Commission and the World Health Organization have warned of unhealthy competition in the race for a drug deemed essential to save lives and resolve the economic chaos wreaked by the virus, while officials in Washington said that they would seek to give priority to American residents.
Bill Gates said efforts to tackle the global HIV / AIDS crisis two decades ago when countries came together to eventually make drugs available in most of the world, including Africa, can help to make COVID-19 drugs widely available.
As examples, he cited as examples the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria created in 2002 and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Control, to provide drugs to people to fight some of the world‘s deadliest diseases.
“One of the best lessons in the fight against HIV / AIDS is the importance of building this vast global distribution system just to distribute the drugs to everyone,” said Bill Gates.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
