Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, and co-founder of Microsoft has hailed India’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities and the efforts of the country’s producers to sell affordable vaccines to the rest of the globe. Mr. Gates stated during a virtual roundtable discussion on the India-US Health Partnership arranged by the Indian embassy on Tuesday that India had supplied over 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to nearly 100 nations in the previous year.
“At the same time, practically every country in the world now offers immunizations to protect children against diseases such as pneumonia and rotavirus, which have been leading causes of infant death for decades,” Mr. Gates said.
The roundtable was planned to bring together important stakeholders from India and the United States in order to leverage the bilateral collaboration in order to make vaccinations more affordable for the world’s population. “While the pandemic is far from ended, we have begun to think beyond the immediate reaction. This includes not only containing COVID but also preparing to contain future outbreaks before they become pandemics and continuing to battle all infectious illnesses,” he stated.
Bill Gates commended Indian PM’s vision and commitment towards global health
Mr. Gates stated in his remarks that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed a desire to strengthen India’s commitment to global health by leveraging the country’s science and technology talent to improve scientific discovery and the development of innovative goods. “This is a shared goal, and collaboration is critical to achieving it,” he said. Mr. Gates stated that the three vaccines — Covaxin, Corbavex, and Covishield — were developed through cross-sector collaborations.
“The Quad country relationship with Bio E. to create over a billion vaccines demonstrates how these partnerships can be scaled up to enable an equitable response,” he explained, referring to the United States, India, Australia, and Japan as a four-nation grouping.
Noting that the hazards associated with COVID-19 were ‘dramatically decreased,’ Mr. Gates warned that another pandemic was almost imminent, necessitating coordination amongst vaccine manufacturers. “This is why projects such as the network of developing nation vaccine makers are so promising. Everyone engaged recognizes that if COVID-19 is to be the last pandemic, we must invest now in coordinated efforts,” Mr. Gates stated.
“While we cannot foresee where breakthroughs in technology will come from to improve our tools, we do know that our investments now will impact whether these advances arrive on time and are ready to reach everyone who needs them,” he added.