Vice Minister Emanuela Del Re attended the first meeting of the newly established “Facilitation Council” of the Accelerator ACT – Access to COVID-19 Tools, convened by the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen and the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom.
The ACT Accelerator is the structured international cooperation platform for the acceleration of research, development and equitable universal distribution of diagnostic and therapeutic tools and the future anti-COVID-19 vaccine, created last 24th April also at the Italian initiative. The “Facilitation Council” is the political governance body of the Accelerator as well as the main forum for coordination, discussion and decision making for the aspects falling within its mandate.
In her speech, the Vice Minister stressed that Italy has constantly promoted a coordinated global response to the pandemic and we were among the first countries to call for the creation of an international alliance, as proposed by Minister Di Maio, to promote research and equitable distribution of a vaccine.
“Italy has strongly supported the global mobilisation of the ACT Accelerator and, to confirm our full commitment, we will contribute additional funds that will bring Italy’s overall contribution to equitable access to vaccines for all, to over 100 million dollars,” the Vice Minister announced.
“Effective multilateralism driven by international cooperation and solidarity is the best tool we have to achieve the goal of equitable access to life-saving tools for all and everywhere” – VM Del Re conclided, assuring Italy’s full commitment also in the next G20 Presidency, “where we will keep the response to the pandemic, global health and support to the ACT Accelerator as priorities”.