Fairer financing of vaccines in a world living with COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted routine and campaign-based vaccination, potentially increasing the future vaccine-preventable disease burden and threatening to overwhelm health systems. Vaccine-preventable diseases are transboundary problems that require global cooperation to achieve the best outcomes. Investments, predominantly by rich countries—in effect transfers to poor countries—are required as part of the financing solution. Theoretical advances show how such funds can be operationally prioritised and disbursed equitably. Such transfers are also in the interest of high-income countries and cooperation achieves better outcomes than strategies such as travel restrictions for vaccine-preventable diseases. Similar cooperation and financing issues will arise if and when it is time to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.

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This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002951

Repository URI

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/73189/