Speaking in an online event organized by Foreign Policy Community Indonesia on Friday, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said equitable access to vaccines was in the national interest of each and every country.

“In our interconnected world if people in low- and middle-income countries miss out on vaccines, the virus will continue to spread and economic recovery globally will be delayed,” he said in a prerecorded message.

Such challenges have motivated the WHO and international organizations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the GAVI vaccine alliance to establish various platforms to jumpstart vaccine development, he said.

“That’s why the WHO and our international partners created Access to the COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and COVAX facility to develop vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics fast and to allocate them fairly, especially for health workers, older people and other at-risk groups,” he said.

CEPI senior policy manager Elen Høeg said the COVID-19 pandemic posed a challenge not only to the research and development of vaccines but also on how to ensure they were fairly allocated, as global demand would outstrip the supply.

She noted that some countries had already signed bilateral agreements with various vaccine manufacturers, but this would not be the case for all countries, especially the least-developed countries.

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