Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations raises $500 million
January 24th, 2017“Stung by the lack of vaccines to fight the West African Ebola epidemic, a group of prominent donors announced Wednesday that they had raised almost $500 million for a new partnership to stop epidemics before they spiral out of control.
The partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, will initially develop and stockpile vaccines against three known viral threats, and also push the development of technology to brew large amounts of vaccine quickly when new threats…arise……Bill Gates, founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest initial donors…has often predicted that the catastrophe most likely to kill 10 million people in the near future is a pandemic rather than nuclear war, terrorism, famine or natural disaster.
The other donors….include the governments of Japan and Norway, and Britain’s Wellcome Trust. Each is putting up $100 million to $125 million over five years; Germany, India and the European Commission are expected to announce donations soon.
Six major vaccine makers — GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi and Takeda — joined in the coalition as “partners” rather than donors, as did the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders……”