What is the ACT Accelerator (original) (raw)
The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, is a groundbreaking global collaboration to accelerate development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
Launched at the end of April 2020, at an event co-hosted by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, the President of France, the President of the European Commission, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator brings together governments, scientists, businesses, civil society, and philanthropists and global health organizations (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CEPI, FIND, Gavi, The Global Fund, Unitaid, Wellcome, the WHO, and the World Bank). Following the ACT-Accelerator launch, UNICEF and PAHO became delivery partners for COVAX, the vaccines pillar.
These organizations have joined forces to speed up an end to the pandemic by supporting the development and equitable distribution of the tests, treatments and vaccines the world needs to reduce mortality and severe disease, restoring full societal and economic activity globally in the near term, and facilitating high-level control of COVID-19 disease in the medium term.
There is no time to waste in the fight against COVID-19. No-one is safe until everyone is safe.
This is a unique partnership of many of the world's international health organizations who have come together to share, and build on, individual expertise to create a powerful global solution that will ensure equity in access to tests, vaccines, treatments across the world with one goal: to reduce the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic by addressing the cause.
The ACT-Accelerator is organized into four pillars of work: diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines and the health systems and response connector. Each pillar is vital to the overall effort and involves innovation and collaboration, with WHO playing a key role in all four pillars, as well as leading the cross-cutting Access and Allocation workstream to ensure the equitable allocation of COVID-19 tools.
The ACT-Accelerator launched its Transition Plan in October 2022, setting out adjustments to its way of working, as countries move from managing COVID-19 as an acute emergency to integration into longer-term disease control programmes.
Focus areas
Diagnostics
The diagnostics pillar, co-convened by the Global Fund and FIND, has an overall objective to significantly increase access to COVID-19 tests and sequencing, which will ensure effective test, trace, isolate, and treat strategies, as well as early identification and containment of new variants.
Therapeutics
Therapeutics can play a role in all stages of COVID-19 disease: to prevent infection; suppress symptoms and spread of infection to others; treat or prevent symptoms; as a life-saving treatment for severe symptoms; and as a treatment that can speed up recovery. The Therapeutics Pillar supports access to safe and effective therapeutics of assured quality to save millions of lives from COVID-19 and to minimise its global health and economic threat. The therapeutics pillar is led by Unitaid and Wellcome.
Vaccines
The vaccines pillar, COVAX, has an overall goal to accelerate the end of the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2021 and to support countries’ needs and own goals to control the disease and reopen society in 2022 and beyond, contributing towards the 70% global vaccination target in 2022.
COVAX is convened by CEPI, Gavi and WHO. UNICEF is global delivery partner, with PAHO covering the Americas.
Health Systems & Response Connector
The Health Systems & Response Connector (HSRC) ensures all countries have the necessary technical, operational and financial resources to translate new COVID-19 tools into national response interventions to stop transmission and save lives.
HSRC is co-convened by The Global Fund, World Bank and WHO, with UNICEF.
