Making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public product will help the world recover faster and suffer less, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.
"There should be a global consensus to make a vaccine, any product, a global public product. And this is a political choice, a political commitment," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the organization's headquarters in Geneva via teleconference at a virtual Aspen Security Forum.
The United Nations health agency launched its Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator initiative at end of April to speed up development of vaccines and therapeutics, and to ensure fair distribution, so that people with financial problems may have access to the doses, according to Tedros.
He noted that six vaccine candidates are in the third phase of clinical trials and the possibility of success for a vaccine is good, but governments and communities and all citizens should also do what is expected of them, which includes physical distancing, hand hygiene, and wearing a mask.
"We want political leaders to decide on this: vaccine nationalism is not good. It will not help us," he said in an online panel discussion with members of the Aspen Security Forum in the United States moderated by the NBC network.
The WHO chief noted that because it's a globalized world with economies intertwined, part of the world or a few countries can't be a safe haven and recover. They should recover together with the rest of the world, he said.
"So what we are saying is, sharing vaccines or sharing other tools actually helps the global world to recover together, and the economic recovery can be faster, and the damage from COVID-19 could be less," he said.
