A Wellcome coalition: fighting epidemics
Today a new initiative to fight global epidemics will announce how much money it has raised and the first three vaccines it will prioritise. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched following several reports into the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak. These said the world needed to get better at driving innovation in vaccines and other countermeasures. Tackling the top 20 threats over the next decade will require $1bn-2bn. Since companies are reluctant to invest in research that might not pay off, others need to plough more into creating, testing and storing vaccines. CEPI's first priorities will be chosen from a list of diseases compiled by the World Health Organisation. The initiative is likely to have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from governments and charities, including the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation. If the plan works, a decade from now the world will be far readier to respond to outbreaks—and many lives will be saved.
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