Gates exec calls for equal access to pandemic vaccines

Dr. Tadataka ‘Tachi' Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation's Global Health Program, has some tough words for affluent countries that use their money to buy their way to the front of the line for pandemic vaccines.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Yamada says that it would not only be inexcusable for the citizens of rich countries to be vaccinated ahead of poor nations, but that the affluent should help pay for the poor.

"The prospect of a worsening global influenza pandemic is real and will not go away anytime soon," says Dr. Yamada. "I cannot imagine standing by and watching if, at the time of crisis, the rich live and the poor die. It will take collective commitment and action by all of us to prevent this from happening."

- read the commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine

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