From his suburban Raleigh home, Dr. Krishna Udayakumar is playing a leading role in the global effort to rid the world of COVID-19.
Udayakumar, 42, is the founding director of Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center, which tracks worldwide production and distribution of COVID vaccines.
The center found that the United States already has bought or contracted for a quarter of the world’s vaccine supply, according to an analysis by Axios. And Bloomberg reports that Americans have had more than a third of vaccinations administered so far.
The problem is getting it to poorer countries around the world. Experts say that’s not only equitable but good for economies of countries like the United States.
“Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you get access to a COVID-19 vaccine,” Udayakumar said Saturday. “The way to save the most lives globally is to distribute vaccines equitably, including to low-income countries. Even high-income countries, including the U.S., will also have stronger and faster economic recoveries if we distribute vaccines equitably around the world.”
The World Health Organization agrees that the war against COVID has to be global. As long as it persists, the pandemic will continue to disrupt travel and trade as well as exacerbate economic inequities.
“(N)obody wins the race,” WHO says on its web site, “until everyone wins.”
International effort
Born in Bangalore, India, Udayakumar grew up in Virginia. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he went on to get a medical degree and an MBA from Duke. He oversees a team of 30, most in North Carolina but some as far as Kenya.
Theirs is a world of acronyms.
There’s the ACT (Access to COVID-19 Tools) Accelerator, a global pandemic response effort whose funders include WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; GAVI, an international vaccine alliance also started with help from the Gates Foundation; and COVAX, an international effort funded by wealthier countries to ensure that COVID vaccines are distributed widely and fairly.
The U.S., along with just a handful of countries including Russia, is not a signatory to — or therefore a funder of — COVAX, according to Duke’s Global Health Innovation Center.
However Congress approved nearly $4 billion to GAVI in its recent $2.3 trillion package of government funding and coronavirus relief.
President Donald Trump, who has sharply criticized the entire package, had not indicated by Saturday whether he’ll sign it. Failure to sign the bill by Monday would lead to a government shutdown.
‘Daunting challenge’
Udayakumar also directs Innovations in Healthcare, a non-profit co-founded by Duke Health, the World Economic Forum and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Operating in more than 90 countries around the world, it works with clinics and other providers to find ways of expanding access to affordable health care.
Now it’s part of a vast network of groups trying to get vaccinations to people around the globe.
“In addition to tracking (vaccine distribution) we’re starting to work with different countries and understand readiness,” Udayakumar said. He and his colleagues are among those working on ways not only to increase vaccine availability and train people to administer it but to ensure people are willing to take it.
“The daunting challenge beyond money,” he said, “is how to do you get from vaccines in vials to jabs in arms?”
Udayakumar said it could take two to four years to reach worldwide vaccination rates that would enable the global herd immunity that experts say is needed to make the spread of the coronavirus unlikely.
“I think having 20% of populations in low- and middle-income countries vaccinated by the end of 2021 is a best-case scenario,” he said, “and would require a lot of pieces falling into place.”
Jim Morrill, who grew up near Chicago, covers state and local politics. He’s worked at the Observer since 1981 and taught courses on North Carolina politics at UNC Charlotte and Davidson College.
