The fund will ask the companies it invests in to make a plan to incorporate those countries into their business models. While great strides have been made, he said, it generally takes years for new medications and interventions to reach poorer countries. He pointed to his experience working on access to treatments for HIV and AIDS as one motivation for the fund. Soni responded that “The WHO Foundation does not ‘pick winners’, but we are helping to make more bets to encourage innovative solutions to save lives.” “The foundation should not be associated with any global venture firm, should not be associated with picking winners and deciding what companies and what technologies should or should not be developed,” Guzman said. Javier Guzman, director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, thinks it is inappropriate that the WHO Foundation is involved with the development of any technology that might eventually be evaluated by the WHO, which he said has the power to shape industries and markets. The foundation will not select the investments but will work with companies to make their technologies accessible and appropriate for markets in low- and middle-income countries. The Global Health Equity Fund will be run by the Israeli-venture group OurCrowd and seeks to raise $200 million to invest in “breakthrough” technologies for health care and in industries that impact health, like energy and agriculture. “Any donor to the WHO, whether a company or a government, the entirety of what they’re doing is not necessarily going to be compliant with WHO norms and standards,” Soni said, adding that the foundation’s acceptance of those gifts should not limit the WHO’s ability to hold those countries or companies accountable.Īnother new vehicle that the foundation has created is an impact investment fund, which launched last year. that do not have regulations, among other commitments. It has also voluntarily extended a policy not to promote formula for babies up to six months to all countries, including those like the U.S. Nestle did not comment on the donation but said it complies with national laws on marketing formula. The foundation eventually reallocated Nestle’s $2.1 million donation to the vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX rather than to the WHO’s COVID-19 response. WHO guidelines advocate for breastfeeding and say that formula should be available when needed, but not be promoted. That donation elicited outcry from some global health professionals because of Nestle’s history of marketing baby formula. The WHO Foundation does not aim to redirect that support, but rather motivate new donors.Īmong the companies that have donated to the foundation are Meta, the parent company of Facebook, medical technology company Masimo Corp., luxury travel company DFS Group, and food giant Nestle. The WHO already receives private support from major philanthropies, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which directs much of its donations toward eradicating polio. She also encouraged the foundation to decline gifts from donors who do not want to be publicly named. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto, who has studied the interactions of industry with health systems. “What they’ve set out in their gift policy is a really good start,” said Quinn Grundy, assistant professor with the Lawrence S. It also bundles gifts to support specific work, such as the WHO’s Ukraine and COVID-19 responses. Soni pointed to the foundation’s gift acceptance and whistleblower policies as examples of how it guards against undue outside influence. The foundation published a list of donors and their donations online, including the anonymous ones. Soni said he is committed to transparency. A veteran of major global health organizations like the Global Fund and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, he most recently worked eight years at the pharmaceutical company Viatris. Soni, the first leader of the foundation, has become an evangelist of sorts for bringing in new private sources of funding for the WHO. But in 2020 with the onslaught of the pandemic and then-President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw from the WHO, many hoped the WHO Foundation might generate new financing from wealthy individuals, the private sector and public fundraising campaigns. The bulk of the WHO’s funding comes from governments.
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