Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates
called for COVID-19 drugs and an eventual vaccine to be made available to
countries and people that need them most, not to the "highest
bidder," saying relying on market forces would prolong the deadly pandemic.
"If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest
bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed,
we'll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic," Gates, a founder of
Microsoft, said in a video released on Saturday during a virtual COVID-19
conference organized by the International AIDS Society.
"We need leaders to make these hard decisions about
distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors."
With hundreds of vaccine projects under way and governments in
Europe and the United States investing billions of dollars in research, trials
and manufacturing, there is concern that richer nations could scoop up
promising medicines against the new coronavirus, leaving developing countries
empty-handed.
The European Commission and the World Health Organization have
warned of an unhealthy competition in the scramble for a medicine seen as key
to saving lives and resolving economic chaos sowed by virus, while some
officials in Washington have indicated they would seek to prioritize U.S
residents.
Gates said efforts begun two decades ago to battle the global
HIV/AIDS crisis, when countries came together to eventually make medicines
available in most of the world including Africa, can serve as a model for
making COVID-19 medicines widely accessible.
"One of the best lessons in the fight against HIV/AIDS is
the importance of building this large, fair global distribution system to get
the drugs out to everyone," Gates said.
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