Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said that a very large portion of Covid-19 vaccines is likely to be manufactured in India through the country's strong and robust private sector partners.
Suzman said that the foundation had been working to support a lot of work around diagnostics as well.
''India is doing everything it can right now with resources at hand to fight the Covid-19 pandemic,'' he added.
He further emphasized the need to have an equitable global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
He said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working at multiple levels to combat Covid-19.
"We have been providing support, so-called upstream, or research and development. We work with this organization, CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, which has been a leading partner in investing in the potential vaccines. We have developed something called a therapeutic accelerator which has raised over $125 million to help find treatments that are going to be effective against Covid," he said.
He said the foundation has been working to support a lot of work around diagnostics as well. "And in that context, we are strong supporters of this global effort, which India is part of, called COVAX, which is a multilateral initiative to procure vaccines at scale and then distribute them through the GAVI vaccine alliance to countries including India," Suzman added.
He said that the biggest learning from the pandemic is that at all levels, global, regional, national, there needs to be a permanent infrastructure in place that is prepared and ready to go which will keep the world much better prepared for the next one, which will come.
''Some of the networks and groups of scientists that joined the Grand Challenges are working hard on many aspects of Covid-19'' said Suzman after responding to a question on how the Grand Challenges platform is relevant for the current pandemic situation.
Grand Challenges India was set up as a partnership of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2012, and Welcome also joined the partnership. Grand Challenges India works across a range of health and developmental priorities ranging from agriculture, nutrition, sanitation, maternal and child health to infectious diseases.
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