When now-CEO Mark Suzman joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2007, global health efforts were focused on the transition to fighting diseases like HIV, malaria, or TB under initiatives such as The Global Fund or PEPFAR.
Fifteen years later, the main lesson he's learned from COVID is is that "we have and did in the end respond albeit late," Suzman said during a livestream discussion on equitable vaccine distribution hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
What we've seen in the response, he explained, is "to some degree back in the glass half-full, half-empty response" with delays and setbacks caused by nationalism and inequitable vaccine distribution that caused many needless deaths. "
That is not a world we want to live in for the future."