LOCKDOWN LEADER: Netflix

During this global pandemic, it’s been boxsets and streaming platforms such as Netflix that have proved invaluable to alleviate the disorienting effects (if not utter tedium) of lockdown. So here’s another plot development well worth watching.

The Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin are donating $30 Million to Gavi Alliance, the non-profit immunisation organisation created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to help tackle Covid-19. This is the very first private-sector donation the Geneva-based drive has had, in its goal to immunize 300 million children over the next five years, at a cost of some $7.4 billion. Gavi, which is helping to fund immunisation programs in lower-income countries, says the money raised will help fast-track coronavirus vaccine development. When a vaccine is finally available, it will the help with its manufacturing and delivery to the world’s most vulnerable.

Hastings, who has a net worth of $4.6 billion, said: “Global immunization is vital to ending this terrible pandemic, and Gavi’s hard-fought gains in this area will help prevent more lost lives and livelihoods. We hope that our contribution will help those most in need, but also to inspire other businesses, entrepreneurs and organizations to join in this urgent effort.”

The Gavi Alliance, which was founded in 2000, has to date helped immunise 760 million children in some of the world’s poorest countries, preventing some 13 million deaths in the process. In June 2019, the Gavi Board approved a new five-year strategy, called ‘Gavi 5.0’, with a vision to ‘leave no-one behind with immunisation’. Said Bill Gates, When Melinda and I started this work… we were inspired by the conviction that ‘all lives have equal value.’ So one of the first things we invested in was vaccines, which protect all children who receive them, no matter how rich or poor they may be. In short, vaccines work.”

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