At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when life saving vaccines were being rolled out in wealthy countries, developing countries were left last in line for access. It was a painful injustice.
To make sure this never happens again in the face of a pandemic threat, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the mRNA Technology Transfer Hub, a global initiative working to empower developing countries with the tools and expertise to produce cutting edge mRNA vaccines for themselves. What’s more, the initiative features the open sharing of knowledge and innovation as part of a spirit of solidarity that was sorely missing on the part of wealthy countries and companies throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Hub has already made tremendous progress. It has signed up over a dozen developing country participants from around the world and has successfully reverse-engineered the Moderna-NIH COVID-19 vaccine based on publicly available information. As they proceed to test this vaccine, they hope that this is only the beginning of an effort to deploy mRNA technology against a range of deadly diseases.
But the Hub needs world leaders to lend support, including another $35 million in grant funding to sustain the project and for intellectual property barriers to be dismantled.
Sign the petition to support the mRNA Tech Transfer Hub — for a pandemic-proof world with life saving vaccines and medicines for all!