Donors and drugmakers offer US$500 million to control global epidemics

New York

STUNG by the lack of vaccines to fight the West African Ebola epidemic, a group of prominent donors announced on Wednesday that they had raised almost US$500 million for a new partnership to stop epidemics before they spiral out of control.

The partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, will initially develop and stockpile vaccines against three known viral threats, and also push the development of technology to brew large amounts of vaccine quickly when new threats, such as the Zika virus, arise.