And guess what? Much of this global health security effort is being run by women. The global initiative for this is COVAX, and for the design, development and initial operational phase, the forces to be reckoned with and women in charge, were the Chair of the Gavi Alliance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, Jane Halton. Dr Okonjo-Iweala has moved on to head up the World Trade Organization now, but you can bet she will continue a keen interest in vaccine equity.
Gavi and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) work in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO), where the leader of their effort is Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan. While Gavi and CEPI both have visionary, driven and fantastic male CEOs (Dr Seth Berkley and Dr Richard Hatchett), the Managing Director of the COVAX Facility which is doing the deals, setting up the conditions and bringing together the 186 countries, territories and other assorted participants to make it all happen, is Aurélia Nguyen who has just been listed one of 100 to watch by Time Magazine.
Several billion dollars will pass through Gavi for the COVID-19 vaccine effort and the responsibility sits with Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, while the accountability for these funds (and the $8 billion dollar Gavi 5.0 programme) in large part falls to Gavi’s Deputy CEO Anuradha Gupta and Managing Director of Finance and Operations, Assietou Diouf. Supporting the Gavi Chair in this undertaking is Vice Chair Sarah Goulding, who also leads the Governance Committee of the Gavi Board.
