 Welcome all to the Accord for a Healthier World Press Conference here at the World Economic Forum in Davos. I'd like to, before we get to the big announcement, I would like to introduce my esteemed panelist. We are joined today by Dr. Albert Brohla, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Pfizer. His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda. His Excellency Dr. Lizaris McCarthy-Chakwara, President of the Republic of Malawi. Mr. Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And Ms. Wang, Angela Wang, Group President of the Pfizer Bio-Pharmaceutical Group. Thank you all. Today, we are announcing the Accord for a Healthier World. Dr. Brohla, can you tell us more about what you are announcing today? Thank you very much, Alem. And first, I want to thank His Excellency Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda. And His Excellency Laris-Chakwara, the President of Malawi, and of Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and our very distinguished guests sitting here. Angela and I, we are very, very proud and thankful that you are here. We are living in a time where science is increasingly demonstrating the ability to take on the world's most devastating diseases. Unfortunately, there existed tremendous health equity gap in our world that determines which of us can use these innovations and which of us cannot. With all we have learned and accomplished over the past two years, the time is now to begin closing this gap even more. In this spirit, Pfizer is excited and proud to launch an Accord for a Healthier World. Through this groundbreaking initiative, Pfizer will provide all its patented medicines and vaccines that are available in the U.S. or in the European Union on a non-for-profit basis to 1.2 billion people living in 45 lower-income countries. This includes all 27 low-income countries, as well as all 18 countries that have transitioned from low-income to lower-middle-income classification in the last 10 years. This commitment will include all future Pfizer medicines and vaccines, as they are launched, discovered and launched as well. Now, as we learned in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, ensuring supply is only the first step to helping patients. For this reason, and in order to make the Accord successful, we look to collaborate with global health leaders to make improvements in other aspects of the effect they use of the products, like diagnosis, education, infrastructure, storage, logistics, and many more. Only when all the obstacles have been overcome can we bring an end to healthcare inequities and deliver breakthroughs for all patients. The governments of Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, Senegal, and Uganda have already committed to work with us, providing early insights as to what is working and what is not, and identifying opportunities to improve so that we can ensure these medicines and vaccines can reach those in need. These insights will help us identify unmet needs, and the resources required for success, including technical expertise, training, diagnostic capacity, innovative financing to close even further the gap. This experience will inform our efforts with the other countries. I am also pleased to announce that we will continue to work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the development of new vaccines and treatments for diseases that disproportionately impact people in low-income countries, like Group B streptococcus and respiratory synchitia virus. This long-term and steadfast focus on access will be an asset for us to take on a bolder step. So today, we are calling upon global health leaders and global health organizations to join the Accord to provide expertise and resources that will help us to close the health equity gap and create a healthier world, one where every human being has equitable access to medicines and vaccines. I'll hand back to you. Thank you. President Kagame, what does this Accord mean for your country and broader African countries? Well, President Chakwara, Dr. Bola, Bill Gates, Angela Fong, ladies and gentlemen, mine is to first of all commend Pfizer and Dr. Bola for this initiative. Rapid and affordable vaccines to the most advanced medicines and vaccines is the cornerstone of this global health, of the global health equity. Pfizer's commitment under the Accord program sets a new standard in this regard, which we hope to see emulated by others. Combined with additional investments in strengthening Africa's public health systems and pharmaceutical regulators, Accord is an important step towards sustainable health security for countries at every income level. Rwanda is very happy to take part in Accord together with partner countries, and we look forward to adding these life-saving medicines and vaccines to our public health. Awesome. Thank you for your kind attention, and I now think... Thank you very much. Thank everyone on this panel. President Chakwara, can you share with us how this Accord is going to impact the people of Malawi? On behalf of the people of Malawi, I'm honored to join my brother, President Pocogami, Mr. Bill Gates, and thanks to Dr. Bola and Angela Wang. In leading the charge towards the creation of a healthier world through this historic and unprecedented Accord with Pfizer, this Accord is the embodiment of what the World Economic Forum is all about, namely a strategic synergy between decision makers from government, private sector, and civil society to enable these three stakeholders to do together on a global scale what they cannot do alone. The beauty of this Accord for countries like Malawi and Rwanda is that it is not a handout, but a real partnership that involves taking Pfizer's strength in manufacturing, Mr. Bill Gates' strength in philanthropy, and our strength in governance and combining them in a spirit of shared sacrifice to put human progress ahead of business profits and political posturing. And for Malawi where access to quality medicines and vaccines is a real challenge, this Accord means that our quest for universal health care in Malawi has a real shot, and I'm very, very grateful. Thank you for those inspiring words. Mr. Gates, how do you hope this call to action will advance progress and innovation in global health? Well, the primary focus of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to improve health equity. That's what Melinda and I picked back in the year 2000 where we first got going. And partnerships with companies like Pfizer have been key to the progress we've made. And for example, Gaby got started, actually announced here at Davos. One of the most important vaccines, the one that saved the most lives of all is the pneumococcus vaccine, and Pfizer was the innovator there with their Prevnar product. And they've been providing that at low cost so that it can get out to all the children of the world. Today's announcement is a strong additional commitment by Pfizer to take their incredible capabilities and make sure that they get out to everyone in the world. For all the drugs they do create the commitment to have the COGS-based pricing. That will improve accessibility. Pfizer's also committing to a partnership with the Foundation to create new products. Two of those will be Group B streptococcus vaccine, which in future events we can brief you on how that will save hundreds of thousands of lives and likewise an RSV vaccine. These are vaccines you give to the mother maternal vaccines and so doing the trials exactly right requires the deep expertise that Pfizer has, so we're super pleased to work together with them. We think this type of accord is a very good model. It's going to help get medicines out. It's great to have two of the pioneering countries here because them will be able to learn, okay, are the medicines really getting out? Is there training in the countries that are needed to get the health benefits that we expect? Global health equity has made progress. We saw once again with COVID, we're not there. Whether it was getting the vaccines or now getting the therapeutics out, it's a lot of hard work. Some excellent things are being done, for example, with Pax Levid to make sure that's going to get out. So we're pleased to be working with Pfizer and we're talking to the entire pharmaceutical industry about these kinds of initiatives and how we can broaden them as part of the whole ESG effort. Thank you. Ms. Wong, can you share with us some closing remarks, but also what is your message to the global health community? Thank you. Well I'd like to thank everyone here for being here with us at this important launch event. And in particular, I want to thank this esteemed group of leaders here today, your Excellency Paul Kagame, your Excellency Lazarus Chakrera, Bill, and honorable leaders from Senegal, from Ghana, as well as from Uganda, the Africa Union, amongst many others. The Accord for a Healthier World is now officially launched. As a native South African, this is a really personal moment for me. I can't begin to express how proud I am of the progressive and audacious goals that have been outlined by the leaders here today. But we know that supply is only the first step to ensuring that medicines and vaccines reach those in need around the world. So Pfizer is committed to partnering with all 45 governments and with all of you, the global community, to help address barriers and mobilize resources to accelerate global access. So I'd like to end the event today by making a call to action. Today, we call on governments, global health leaders, the NGO community, development organizations, and financial institutions to join this game-changing Accord that will bring us closer to closing the health equity gap and to create a healthier world. We need your expertise and your resources. But even more importantly, we need your commitment and belief that we have the power to change the status quo. Let me close with the famous quote from the most revered global icon from my home country, South Africa, Nelson Mandela. And he said, it always seems impossible until it's done. So together, we can do this, and we can do this well. Thank you. Back to you, Annem. Thank you. So now I would like to leave a few minutes for our Q&A. There'll be two people with microphones. You can state your name and your organization. I would just like to remind everyone in the room that we will be taking questions only on the Accord. Thank you. Any questions? Yes? Hi. Good morning. This is Ting Ting from TVBS News in Taiwan. So in relevance to the Accord, but I was sort of tied to monkeypox, which is actually the most discussed issue these days, is actually has been Pfizer been monitoring what assessment of further vaccines or medication. And through this Accord announced today, what steps would be taken to work with African nations and to understand this, this is better. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. As we said, the Accord, first of all, includes all our patent-protected medicines. These are the medicines that cannot be available through generic manufacturers in these countries. So all of them, the same manufacturing size that they're producing for the Americans or Europeans will produce the same quality and will be sending at the cogs. But we know that this is not going to be likely enough in all countries. And this is the reason why, although it is available immediately to all 45, we have selected five countries with progressive governments that they really care and they have passion for health of their people so that we can work and identify what needs to be done in the ground in addition to just providing the medicines. And there will be challenges. We have seen that with the vaccines. When the vaccines became available, it was not always easy to convert the vaccines to vaccinations. So we need to identify those issues, resolve them all, and then eventually learn to the other 40 countries of this 45 Accord. And we can't do that alone. It's not going to be only the work of the governments and the work of Pfizer. We need the Gates Foundation. We need the WHO. We need other foundations that are working on the ground. We need doctors without medicines to be able to help over there so that together we can have a health solution rather than just sending medicines. Thank you so much. For the Accord, you talk about others joining you. Sorry, I must have fell right away from the national in Abu Dhabi. Sorry. Talk about the Accord, other people joining you. When it comes to logistics, we saw in the pandemic, for example, the UAE became a logistics hub for medicines and drugs and other equipment. Do you foresee bringing in logistics hubs like the UAE into this to help with the distribution and the equity? Thank you. We are planning to work all these details right now, as we speak. And I think those five countries will be the first ones to organize the logistics so that we can have, let's say, flow of the medicines without any interruptions. Logistics will be one of the main issues, obstacles that needs to be addressed. Jack Denton from Barons. My question is for Bill, but I'd like to open it to everyone up on stage. This Accord is no doubt meaningful. And yet there are empty seats in this press conference. Everyone here seems to be talking about Russia, Ukraine. Are you concerned that COVID is losing our attention? Well, certainly the Ukrainian situation is stretching the world's resources. And we see that both in terms of resources for health, resources for food, availability of fertilizer. The tragedy of the war goes far beyond the battlefield. And we'll see this year, you know, the generosity of governments in terms of things like funding, global fund, funding, GAVI, you know, budgets are incredibly stretched. The pandemic alone put us in that situation, and now we have Ukraine on top of that. So maintaining the momentum on health innovation, health improvement, that's a huge challenge. The pandemic was a setback. We have more malaria deaths now than we had three years ago. Routine vaccination numbers went down a fair bit. So yes, there's a risk that in terms of resource tradeoffs or even attention that global health issues will get a lot less focused than they deserve as we deal with so many challenges. I don't have many to much to add. I think I agree with what Bill said. Any questions? Hi. Thanks again. For Mr. Gates, you mentioned malaria. You worked with the UA President, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, for many years on malaria and polio. What do you think is next for battling these kind of diseases? Well, with malaria we have pretty good drugs and pretty good bed nets. We have to constantly change the drugs because you get drug resistance. Even the bed nets, we have to change the active ingredients. So we have a great pipeline of that. We have some genetic approaches called gene drive that are still in the laboratory that may cut mosquito populations. A dream for malaria, and we'll talk to all the great mRNA companies, including Pfizer, about this, is that we could use that mRNA platform to make a really powerful malaria vaccine. We have a malaria vaccine that we funded with GSK, but the duration of protection is too short. And so it's possible now that mRNA has been proven out that we'll be able to solve that problem. So a lot of R&D investment, a lot of delivery investment. Global fund is the biggest multilateral in that space. And so hopefully if they can raise the $18 billion they hope to, we'll take the increased malaria deaths of the last couple of years and get it back down to a much lower number. Hi, Vanessa Kerry from seed global health. I just have a question. First of all, thank you. Changing the status quo in a moment like right now where COVID has absolutely shown the importance of health to our economic recovery, our security, growing inequity, or trying to reverse that. I'm curious how we can continue the momentum out of this room. How do we continue to engage partners so that people really understand, especially at a place like the World Economic Forum, the importance of health and the need for all of us to mobilize and make this front and center for our overall well-being. And so I'd love to hear a little bit please about the next steps, about engaging a broader partnership and a broader coalition around a movement that will hopefully change the status quo. Well, I think the time that we've spent here today and this press conference will help us to get the word out that we are looking for partners. This call to action belongs to all of us, not just the people here that have volunteered to be the first five countries. For sure, we'll learn a lot from that, but this really is a moment out to the world for people who are interested, who can contribute, who can be part of our solution. Please, I'd love to hear from you. We're also conducting a large number of bilaterals while we're here with organizations who have already stuck up their hands, and I want to be part of this. And, you know, we have all, I mean, obviously leading up to this event, but we beyond have a number of organizations, we're one, you know, including financing organizations who obviously can play a massive role, not only in helping in product procurement, but as we've said, the capacity building, the infrastructure development is going to be so important and that we know there are organizations who are focused on that as well, both at a public level as well as in a private level. So thanks for the question. And I wanted to add that I think we will con... I think one thing it is Pfizer's portfolio is brought, but doesn't cover all diseases. I'm certain that the other pharmaceutical companies will follow. I've spoken to several of the CEOs and they want to be part of it. So medicines will be available, I hope, but it's not going to be enough. I think we need also to work on the ground for diagnosis, treatments. Someone should write the prescriptions of these highly sophisticated medicines. And for that, I repeat, we need the help of WHO, of Doctors Without Borders, of many other organizations that can come. Bill Gates' organization, for example, has been fundamental for us to help through gravity and through other means distribute vaccines to the world so far. And as Bill said, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved because of that. We can do way more. And I think we should all come together with one goal, how to make sure that the modern wonder of medicine, which are the medicines, are finding their way to everyone. And I commit that we will actively seek these partnerships and engagements with all organizations that I just mentioned. I wanted to tease out a little bit about the last question. Obviously, the pandemic has taught us a lot of valuable lessons about access, equity, and public health. Dr. Borla, how has this initiative been informed by COVID-19? I think it was saved also by COVID-19 because always we had our dream to make this happen. In fact, in 2019, Pfizer set a goal to reduce by year 2023 by 50% the amount of people in the world that cannot afford our medicines. And I think we will exceed this goal together because we are adding 1.2 billion people that cannot afford the medicines. But so that was already on the works and was happening. But what changed also our philosophy was when you realize that when vaccines arrived to several countries, other things were not ready so that we can use the vaccines and they can convert them to vaccinations. So instead of saying, let's wash our hands, we give you the products, do whatever you want, I think we should take way more responsible position now that we know that we will face issues and work with the governments, work with everybody else to make sure that it's not only we give you the medicines but we give you expertise. We have, for example, a program, we call it Global Health Fellows. This is volunteers from Pfizer, they can raise their hand right now, doctors or engineers that they're working for Pfizer. If they want to go and work together with a non-governmental organization in Africa, for example, or in other places, we have a program that we will provide them the salary, we will provide them accommodation in the place and their job will wait for them when they come back. This is a significant force of expertise. If we put it together with the right people in Rwanda, in Malawi, with their ministers, with their hospitals, with the people that organize their logistics if we send engineers there, for example, that can be very meaningful. We didn't have that in mind to scale up this program before the pandemic. Now that we know that vaccines is not only enough, that medicines is not only enough, we will do that as well. Fantastic. President Kagami, I just want to continue on that thread. Rwanda has made incredible stride in public health. Can you share more about your approach to public health as a leader and how this partner will work? Our approach has been to say, even as a government, with limited resources, as we do, have to contribute something. Two things we contribute. One is paying attention to the problem of public health. The second is, even within our limited resources, to find what we contribute towards that. And that comes together with then the support we get from partners, many partners, whether it is the foundations, philanthropies, or now companies like Pfizer and others. So we want to get that support adding to what we are already contributing for ourselves, knowing that this is our responsibility. And we make sure that we pay attention to availability, to affordability, and access by everyone in our country without leaving behind any level of income people in our own country. And then, collaborations across with other countries, neighboring countries, or on the continent, but above all, the partners that have expertise and resources to work with us. Thank you. President Chakwara, we know that global public health is shaped by a broader range of determined. How is this accord going to change the everyday life of the people in Malawi? We would have to deliberately involve also stakeholders, community leaders, partners across board, so that ownership becomes extremely important in making sure that the application of a great accord like this becomes meaningful. Most of Malawian communities are in rural parts of the country, and with infrastructure development that makes sure that we have facilities that are accessible to everyone, we will have to work with those structures and make sure that we implement almost religiously whatever needs to happen to make sure we have a healthy nation. Thank you. On that sentiment, I would like to say as an African, as an Ethiopian, I'm also very honored to have been part of this announcement of this launch. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. And of course, this esteemed panel for making this launch happen. Thank you. Thank you.