Coronavirus: PM Narendra Modi pledges $15 million to global vaccines alliance GAVI

India on Thursday pledged $15 million to Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a virtual summit of world leaders hosted by his United Kingdom counterpart Boris Johnson.

The leaders and other representatives of over 50 countries, business leaders, United Nations agencies and civil society organisations took part in the summit. The participants pledged funding of altogether $7.4 billion to support the Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, to help it save up to eight million lives around the world over the next five years.

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The Prime Minister said that India recognised and valued the work of the Gavi and that was why it had become a donor to the alliance while still being eligible for receiving its support.

He said that India’s support to Gavi was not only financial in nature. He added that India’s huge demand also brought down the global price of vaccines for all, saving almost $400 million for the Gavi over the past five years. He reiterated that India stood in solidarity with the world along with its proven capacity to produce quality medicines and vaccines at low cost of by using its own domestic experience in rapidly expanding immunisation and its considerable scientific research talent.

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“India not only has the capacity to contribute to the global health efforts, but also has the will to do so in a spirit of sharing and caring,” said the Prime Minister.

The Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a public–private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. It has immunised over 760 million children in the poorest countries of the world, saving more than 13 million lives.

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The Gavi’s routine immunisation efforts, including during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, help stop the spread of infectious diseases and the resurgence of other epidemics. “If a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine is developed, it will also have a role in its delivery around the world,” the British High Commission in New Delhi stated after the conclave on Thursday. “Global access (to the COVID-19 vaccine) will ensure a collective international recovery”.

Modi said that India’s civiliSation taught it to see the world as one family and that it had tried to live up to the teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that India did so by sharing the country’s available stocks of medicines with over 120 countries, by forging a common response strategy in its immediate neighborhood and by providing specific support to countries that sought it, while also protecting its own vast population.

The Prime Minister said that the COVID-19 pandemic, in some ways, has exposed the limitations of global cooperation and that, for the first time in recent history, the human kind faced a clear common enemy.