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No More Pandemic Have-Nots

With the Global North still dragging its feet while billions of people around the world remain vulnerable to COVID-19, a new coalition of leading philanthropies has come together to press for meaningful action. Failure to address this crisis means that we will almost certainly fail in the face of the next one, too.

NEW YORK – COVID-19 has bifurcated the world like almost nothing else. The wealthiest countries have more than enough vaccine doses with which to protect their people from the ravages of the virus, while the poorest countries do not. Those in the Global North also have the means to stave off economic calamity and social disruption through massive stimulus packages, while hundreds of millions in the Global South have been driven into extreme poverty. This inequitable divide leaves humanity far more vulnerable to the next stage of the pandemic, as well as to any other systemic crisis that may emerge.

As leaders of some of the world’s largest philanthropies, there are two things we know for sure. First, history has taught us that transformational change almost always has been triggered by some deep crisis. Second, only by coming together can the world muster the bold, urgent action needed to reverse the great divergence between the haves and have-nots that we see today. Only through cooperation and coordination can we launch a transformative era of progress.

To that end, the Aliko Dangote Foundation, Archewell Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chaudhary Foundation in Nepal, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Fundación Saldarriaga Concha, the Kagiso Trust, the MasterCard Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the OppGen Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have joined forces to establish a global alliance of foundations. And we are inviting other philanthropies to join our network.

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