Ammon News - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday urged rich countries to pay their fair share of the money needed for its plan to conquer Covid-19 by contributing $16 billion as a matter of urgency.

According to the AFP, the WHO said the rapid cash injection into its Access to Covid Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) could finish off Covid as a global health emergency this year.

The WHO-led initiative is aimed at developing, producing, procuring and distributing tools to tackle the pandemic: vaccines, tests, treatments and personal protective equipment.

ACT-A gave birth to the Covax facility, designed to ensure poorer countries could access eventual vaccines, correctly predicting that richer nations would hog doses coming off the production lines.

It needed $23.4 billion for its program for the year October 2021-September 2022 but only $800 million has been raised so far. The scheme therefore wants $16 billion up front from wealthy nations "to close the immediate financing gap", with the rest to be self-funded by middle-income countries.