The World Health Organization announced on Monday that it had succeeded in raising more than 242 million dollars in one year (more than 200 million euros) with its solidarity fund for the fight against Covid-19, but it needs $ 1.6 billion more this year.
This original funding mechanism for a UN agency - which functions like the famous jackpots that we see blooming - was brought to the baptismal font on March 13, 2020 and has since benefited from the generosity of 661,000 individuals, companies and other organizations, in order to finance the assistance that WHO and its partners are providing to countries in the fight against the pandemic.
A good performance, rejoices the organization in a press release, explaining that it is necessary to redouble efforts to manage to raise the 1.6 billion dollars that it considers it needs to "
overcome the present and future challenges
" in the battle against the pandemic.
This next phase of fundraising will be led by the very young WHO Foundation, an independent organization responsible for raising money on behalf of WHO, with a limited budget (just over 5.8 billion dollars for the period 2020-2021) but whose role has been increased by the pandemic.
This second phase must continue to directly finance the fight against the disease, but also finance the anti-disinformation campaign led by the organization, or even accelerate equitable access to vaccines.
This is one of the priorities of the organization which, together with the Alliance for Vaccines (Gavi) among others, has set up the Covax system, notably making it possible to finance vaccines for 92 disadvantaged countries thanks to donor countries.