Gordon Brown proposes G7 funding model to vaccinate poorer countries
The former Prime Minister said that Friday’s G7 meeting will decide “who lives and who dies”, dependent on access to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Brown argued the G7 countries should use the summit to create a cost-sharing formula, modelled on UN peacekeeping, to help fund vaccine distribution in the poorest countries.
International agencies the ACT-Accelerator Alliance and Covax provide a vehicle for preordering and distributing vaccines equally among the 92 poorest countries in the world.
Writing in Bloomberg, Brown said they are critically under-funded: “to bridge these agencies’ huge financing gap this year, $16 billion more is needed now, and upward of $30 billion next year.”
Based on his proposed model, Brown argues the G7 countries should pay the majority (67%) of the total funds needed, with other G20 countries like China and Russia liable for the rest.
The funding plan is similar to that used to pay for United Nations peacekeeping, and takes into account factors like each country’s income and wealth. In Brown’s suggested plan, the U.S. would pay 27%, Europe 22%, the U.K. 5% and Japan 6%. Canada, South Korea and Australia, 2% each.
Overall this is just a drop in the ocean for richer countries, Brown argues. According to this model, the US and Europe would pay around $4 billion more this year towards the global vaccination effort. In America’s case, this would mean less than 0.5% of the cost of it $2 trillion economic stimulus.
The former Labour leader’s suggestion comes as a group of rebel Conservative MPs failed on Monday to overturn the government’s decision to cut annual aid spending on foreign aid from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income, roughly £4 billion.
In order to achieve Boris Johnson’s promise to vaccinate the world, a total of 11 billion doses are needed. But “of the 2 billion doses already administered, 85% have gone to richer countries,” Brown points out.
So far, only 1% of the world’s doses have landed in sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile in the UK more than 60% of UK adults have received a first dose of the vaccine, with over-25s eligible for theirs from this week.
“Vaccinating the world is not just an act of charity: It’s in all our self-interest,” Brown said, as he pointed out that ensuring a healthy global population could increase output by up to $200 billion.
“It is the best insurance policy in the world, and in both human and economic terms the benefits far outweigh the costs,” Brown said. “Let’s see the G7 step up once again.”