1. Deputy Minister for Multilateral and Global Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ham Sang-wook attended the “Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit” through a pre-recorded message. The Summit was held in London on 7-8 March and co-hosted by the UK government and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which has been driving global efforts to develop vaccines for infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

※ CEPI was launched in 2017 with the aim of supporting research and development of vaccines to stop future epidemics. It played a crucial role in the joint efforts to develop COVID-19 vaccines, as a member of the ACT-Accelerator, a global initiative to coordinate collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

※ Since 2020, Korea has been contributing 3 million US dollars annually to CEPI by using the ‘Global Disease Eradication Fund,’ an air ticket solidarity levy.

° The Summit was organized with a view to raising 3.5 billion US dollars for CEPI’s 2022-2026 Strategy to ensure the development of and equitable access to safe and effective countermeasures for infectious diseases.

2. At the Summit, Deputy Minister Ham highlighted the urgent need to reform the global health emergency ecosystem in view of the repeated occurrence of public health emergencies, such as COVID-19. He expressed Korea’s will to increase its contribution to CEPI for the next strategic period.

° Participants from governments, international organizations, foundations, academia and industry came together for the occasion, reiterating the significance of solidarity and coordination in the global response to health crisis. The pledges announced at this Summit amounts to 1.5 billion US dollars.

3. Korea will continue to join in the international community’s efforts to prevent and eradicate infectious diseases and to better prepare the world for future pandemics.