COVID-19 Africa Watch talks to Gayle Smith, President and CEO of the ONE Campaign, about the global response to COVID-19, inclusive access to an eventual vaccine, and the role of civil society in responding to the pandemic.

Key Takeaways

The following are a few of the main takeaways from COVID-19 Africa Watch’s conversation with Gayle Smith, President and CEO of the ONE Campaign:

• The pandemic has exposed existing systemic inequalities within and across countries, and has resulted in disproportionate negative impacts on low- and middle- income countries. It is in the global community’s interest, as well as a moral obligation, to stand with those countries that have been most severely impacted by the pandemic, whether it is in terms of health and economic outcomes.
• Historically, it takes approximately seven years for a vaccine that is available in developed countries to be made available in developing countries. In order to make COVID-19 vaccines available to countries across the globe, an international coalition of governments, big foundations and pharmaceutical companies has created an advanced market mechanism called COVAX, whereby vaccines would be made available to low- and middle-income countries either by donation or at prices those countries can afford.
• In responding to the COVID-19 crisis, the world has already spent multiple times what it would have cost to prepare every country to prevent, detect, and respond to such a threat. Leaders must now turn to building the capacity necessary to respond to future shocks and invest much more in prevention.
• As the Africa Medical Supplies Platform illustrates, Africa has made a significant investment of political capital to tackle the vaccine collaboratively as a region – as such, it stands out compared to what we have seen elsewhere in the world.
• Civil society has an essential part to play in the global response, and this includes taking care of each other, masking, social distancing, and holding our leaders accountable to the task of responding at a global scale.

The interview was conducted by Gwendoline Darguste, an IFC-Milken Institute Capital Market Scholar from the Central Bank of Haiti.