Amref Health Africa and other organizations urge G20 Finance Ministers to consider a set of actions urgently needed to ensure accelerated and sustained global response to COVID-19

In advance of the G7 and G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meetings — taking place on April 20, 2022 in Washington, D.C. — Amref Health Africa has joined other civil society organizations from across the world to call on G20 leaders and finance ministers to urgently ensure the global response to COVID-19 is sustained and accelerated. Meeting this goal remains a critical variable for the world’s recovery, security and stability.

Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors are strategically positioned to make the G7 and G20 political commitments a reality by articulating actions and funding. The decisions they reach in these meetings and those scheduled in the coming weeks — ahead of the 2nd Global COVID-19 Summit — will reflect their true commitment to putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing another crisis of such kind and magnitude.

Concretely, this group of organizations has asked all G20 Finance Ministers to consider the following actions:

Finance the COVID-19 response and pandemic preparedness and increase transparency to enhance value for money.

• Swiftly fund the most urgent needs of low- and middle-income countries so they can deliver national, regional, and global targets on vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics as well as delivery of all COVID-19 tools.
• Fully fund COVAX’s Pandemic Vaccine Pool and delivery costs for all pandemic countermeasures both through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) and at country levels.
• Fully fund the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) five-year strategy so we have a head start in beating future pandemic threats through R&D that is designed to put equitable access at the heart of global pandemic responses.
• Facilitate increased transparency in the production, pricing, supply, financing, and delivery of pandemic countermeasures to track tools from production to patients.

Innovate to deliver new sources of financing for the global COVID-19 response and pandemic preparedness.

• Stand up and sustainably finance a new Global Health Security and Pandemic Preparedness Fund in 2022 to jumpstart financing for country and regional preparedness for pandemic threats, toward a target of at least US$10 billion annually. Gaps to focus on can be identified through the Global Health Security Index, as well as through country-led processes.
• High-income countries should urgently deliver the US$100 billion in recycled Special Drawing Rights pledged by the G20 through Multilateral Development Banks and ensure these are leveraged for global health and climate finance without delay.
• Ministers should also explore other sources of financing beyond Official Development Assistance — including via the Global Public Investment model — prioritizing ending pandemics as vital to the world’s economic and human security and stability. Investment in primary health care systems must be included to prevent and better respond to future pandemic threats.

Amid the pressing issues that the international community faces, we must intensify our work together to accelerate momentum on the global COVID-19 response and ensure comprehensive pandemic preparedness in all countries. We offer our full support to you on this agenda to ensure we make progress on these issues in the coming months.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this at your earliest convenience.

Read the full letter.