CEPI will initially work to develop vaccines against the diseases causes by the Nipah, Lassa and Mers-CoV viruses. These diseases all have known potential to become pandemics. CEPI will also work on developing methods to be able to respond quickly to previously unknown pathogens.
The initiative to create CEPI comes as a result of the Ebola outbreak, which cost more than 11.000 lives. The world reacted too slowly and the outbreak had devastating consequences. At the same time we saw that cooperation with international actors gave us the opportunity to test a new vaccine faster than ever before during the outbreak itself, said Solberg.
The Governments of Japan, Germany and India, the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust are together with the Government of Norway contributing with an initial investment of approximately US$460m. The secretariat of the organization will be placed in Oslo, Norway.
The press release can be found here https://www.regjeringen.no/