BORIS Johnson is to urge world leaders to unite in the fight against disease as he hosts a global vaccine summit seeking to raise £6 billion to immunise 300 million children within five years.
The Prime Minister will on Thursday open the Gavi vaccine alliance meeting after insisting this was the “moment for humanity to unite” in the fight against coronavirus.
At Wednesday’s daily Downing St press conference, he said: “We need effective international action to reduce the impact of the virus across the globe…
“Health experts are agreed that if coronavirus is left to spread in developing countries, that could lead to future waves of infection coming back and reaching the UK.
“While our amazing NHS has been there for everyone in the country who needs it, many developing countries have health care systems that are ill-prepared to manage this pandemic. So, to ensure the world’s poorest countries have the support they need to slow the spread of the virus, tomorrow I will open the global vaccine summit hosted by the UK.”
The event will bring together more than 50 countries and leading figures like Microsoft founder Bill Gates to raise at least £6bn for the Gavi vaccine alliance.
During the next five years with the UK’s support as the alliance’s biggest donor – it has pledged more than £1.6bn over the period – the programme aims to immunise a further 300m children in the poorest countries against deadly diseases like typhoid, polio and measles to save millions of lives.
Mr Johnson said: “This support for routine immunisations will shore up poorer countries’ health systems to deal with coronavirus and so help to stop the global spread and prevent a second wave of the virus reaching the UK.
“This virus has shown how connected we are; we’re fighting an invisible enemy and no one is safe frankly until we are all safe and again this is all contingent upon each of us continuing to do our bit,” he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel