The first time I ever wrote about global health was an article on the looming AIDS crisis in my native South Africa. My piece for the Johannesburg Star in 1991 reported dire predictions from experts about the potential of an epidemic. A major cause for pessimism was that, back then, HIV/AIDS could not be prevented or treated medically.

The same was true of the outbreaks of SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, and Zika in 2016. It is also the case with the previously unknown coronavirus, COVID-19, which has now reached more than 100,000 cases worldwide.

Any disease which threatens lives is disturbing, but one for which there is no treatment is especially alarming. And, as we’ve already seen with COVID-19, countries and communities bear immense human, economic, and social costs. At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we’re committed to doing everything we can to ease that burden, especially for the world’s poorest people who are often hardest hit by epidemics and their aftermath.

That is why today, we are joining forces with Wellcome and Mastercard to beef up our response—backed by $125 million in both new funding and money already earmarked to tackle this epidemic. The money will be used to identify potential treatments for COVID-19, accelerate their development, and prepare for the manufacture of millions of doses for use worldwide. The expertise of pharmaceutical companies will be critical to this endeavor, named the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.

Epidemics introduce a paradox to the world. Viruses like COVID-19 spread rapidly but developing vaccines and treatments to stop them moves slowly. If we want to make people, particularly the most vulnerable, safer from outbreaks then we need to find a way to unwind this paradox: to speed up R&D and slow down the spread.

The only way to treat a viral infection, such as COVID-19, is with antiviral drugs. Right now, we can only treat the symptoms since there simply aren’t antiviral medications that can treat a range of conditions in the same way that antibiotics do for bacterial infections. This is where we believe we can help by partnering with private and philanthropic enterprises to lower the financial risk and technical barriers for biotech and pharmaceutical companies developing antivirals for COVID-19.