> The sense of panic in this memo is palpable.
Multilateralism is faltering in the face of a crisis
23 June 2021
Three crucial meetings have taken place over the last month that should have reversed the course of
the pandemic: the G20 Global Health Summit, the World Health Assembly and the G7 Summit. The
world expected that world leaders would understand the gravity of the situation and take urgent,
ambitious and transformational action to support equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and
treatments, strengthen healthcare systems, scale up financing for preparedness, and immediately
begin negotiations on a pandemic treaty.
While there have been some minor steps forward, commitments have, on the whole, been
aspirational and without the level of clarity or urgency needed to address this crisis.
We appreciate the spirit of global cooperation and solidarity exhibited by world leaders but are deeply
disturbed by the enormous gap between the commitments made and the action required. We must
move much further and far faster.
WHO has set a target of vaccinating 70% of the world’s population over the next 12 months to end
the pandemic. This would require 11 billion vaccine doses, many more than have been committed by
G7 leaders.
Wherever populations remain at risk, future waves are almost inevitable, particularly with the more
transmissible variants. With the evolution of the virus speeding up, we cannot wait for commitments
to trickle slowly into 2022; we need to significantly ramp up vaccination now.
We call on leaders to
immediately share - at an absolute minimum - 1 billion vaccine doses with COVAX by the end of 2021
– not 2022. Unless these vaccines doses are deployed equitably in all countries, more variants will
emerge, including some that have the potential to evade current vaccines. People will die
unnecessarily. The tragedy of inequitable access to HIV treatment is playing out yet again with COVID-
19 vaccines.
== Science has outpaced solidarity; for the first time in history, more people will die after we have an
effective vaccine than before. ==