How to fight against pandemics? A few days before the opening of the G7, on May 26 and 27 in Japan, which will make room for health emergencies in its program, the World Bank Group, associated with the World Health Organization (WHO), opens an emergency pandemic fund. The Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) is responsible for fighting deadly pandemics. “Japan, which holds the presidency of the G7, has pledged to kick off this new initiative with a pledge of $ 50 million in initial funding“, underlines the World Bank Groupin a press release.
Countering Ebola outbreaks
Concretely, this fund will allow “bring funding and experts to where an outbreak occurs and before it gets out of hand“, explains Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group. The goal: not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Because, according to the president of the Group,”crisis Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone taught us that we need to be much more vigilant about the outbreaks and intervene immediately to save lives but also to protect economic growth“. In the event of a new epidemiological outbreak of Ebola, the PEF plans to release funds to allow an earlier response against the virus and better care of the sick to contain the spread as much as possible. the World Bank, “if the PEF had existed when the Ebola virus was spreading rapidly in West Africa, that is to say in mid-2014, it would have been able to mobilize an initial amount of $ 100 million as early as the month July and significantly contain the spread and severity of the epidemic“. But the PEF does not intend to stop at the Ebola virus: the viruses of flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), coronavirus MERS, Lassa fever and Rift Valley fever are on the list of diseases of concern to the World Bank Group. “WHO fully supports the creation of the Pandemic Contingency Funding Mechanism as it will provide a critical line of defense against very high-risk pathogens and make a critical contribution to global health security“, revealed Margaret Chan, Director General of WHO.
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