The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that a UN-led initiative to hasten the development of COVID-19 vaccines and medication is currently facing a massive funding issue.

The project, known as the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT), has received $2.5 billion in pledges, a WHO spokeswoman, Caroline Schmutte, told dpa correspondents.

According to the UN health agency, the ACT initiative was estimated for $31.3 billion to help fund it for an initial period of a year. 

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"There are major financing gaps," said Schmutte, who leads Wellcome's Germany office.

Schmutte also criticized countries that have negotiated individually with pharmaceutical companies to pre-order vaccines that are still in development, including Germany, the United States and Switzerland.

"This could create hurdles for a fair and needs-based distribution of vaccines," the WHO spokeswoman said.

"We need to prevent vaccine nationalism," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday in Geneva, stressing that the first shipments of vaccines must be available to at-risk people everywhere, not just in a few countries.

The initiative, which was launched at a Brussels donor conference in May, advocates for the fair distribution of future vaccines and medications to developing as well as developed countries.

ACT involves major philanthropic health funds such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Britain-based Wellcome Trust.

Recall that in recent news, Billionaire business magnate Bill Gates has been on a troll on conspiracy theories accusing him of synthesizing coronavirus and also gaining momentum online since the beginning of the pandemic.

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A video accusing Gates of wanting “to eliminate 15 per cent of the world population” through vaccination and electronic microchips has attracted millions of views on YouTube.

In an interview with CNN Townhall, the Microsoft founder said “It’s a bad combination of pandemic and social media and people looking for a very simple explanation.”

Responding to this, Gates said his foundation has given more money to buy vaccines to save lives than any group.”

He has pledged $250 million in efforts to fight the pandemic, and his foundation has spent billions of dollars improving health care in developing countries over the past 20 years, CNN disclosed.