Gordon Brown has urged rich countries to consider “extraordinary measures” similar to those taken during the global financial crisis to increase developing nations’ access to Covid vaccines, calling on governments to fill a $16bn (£11.8bn) funding gap within weeks.
The former British prime minister, who hosted the 2009 G20 summit credited with having staved off a second Great Depression and as chancellor helped unveil a landmark debt relief package at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, said a similar act of international coordination was urgently required on Covid.
“Just as in the way we had to deal with debt relief and then deal with the global financial crisis by taking extraordinary measures to try to overcome these challenges we have to do this even now,” he said.
Speaking on the Equals podcast hosted by Oxfam on Friday, Brown said the leaders of wealthy countries had weeks to commit to filling a $16bn funding gap announced by the World Health Organization this week for its plan to accelerate equitable access to Covid vaccines and tests.
“Unless the money comes in urgently, we will not be able to fund the next stages of vaccines, treatments, testing, and even the medical oxygen and PPE needed by nurses and doctors [around the world],” he said.
Noting that countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo had vaccinated fewer than 1% of their populations, Brown reiterated his calls for a vaccine patent waiver and technology transfer.
“What’s happened in Africa is as bad as what happened under colonial rule,” he said. “Africa has been deprived of vaccines but also of the ability to manufacture its own vaccines because it does not have the patents to do so.”
He added: “The scale of this inequality is so great that I’m not sure the world will ever forgive us for failing to deliver the equity in vaccine distribution that should be possible.”
