Gordon Brown has challenged Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to recognise the “deadly urgency” of joining a global push to help poor countries combat Covid-19 and warned the world’s two biggest economies that go-it-alone strategies will end in failure. The former prime minister – who orchestrated the international response to the global financial crisis of 2008-09 – said Washington and Beijing could not afford to sit out a multilateral effort designed to raise $8bn (£6.4bn) to strengthen the health systems of developing nations. “This is an entire generation’s appointment with destiny. No one can be truly safe unless the disease is tackled, wherever it takes hold,” Brown said. “If we are to stop this in its tracks, our interventions will only be as effective as the weakest link in the global chain. So, if any issue is a candidate for multilateral global action, then it must be our response to this pandemic.” Brown, Labour prime minister between 2007 and 2010, has helped organise a virtual pledging conference next Monday and persuaded seven major funders – the UK, the EU, France, Germany, Japan, Norway and Saudi Arabia – to take part. The summit was agreed following a recent letter – signed by 200 economists, health professionals, former presidents and prime ministers – urging far greater global cooperation. Brown added that the world was on the cusp of a “life or death” moment and it was vital that the US and China supported the plan to pay for vaccines, test kits and treatments in developing countries. Thirty-four countries in Africa spend less than $200 a head per year on healthcare, and the former prime minister said they needed help to improve their health systems. Failure to come up with a multilateral response would risk the pandemic taking hold in poorer parts of the world and subsequently being reimported into richer nations. “The health of each depends on the health of all. Local solutions everywhere are only as good as the global response,” Brown said. “To that end, we must outlaw the ugly ‘vaccine nationalism’ that seems to be setting in. Restricting new vaccines to those who can afford them will condemn millions to enduring multiple waves of the illness. We must also crack down on medical piracy, whereby, instead of joining a coordinated international effort to increase their global supply, a few countries seek, by whatever means, to monopolise testing kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment.” So far, poor countries have not been as badly hit by the pandemic as advanced countries, but the United Nations has estimated that Covid-19 could cost between 300,000 and 3 million lives in Africa. Brown said: “While America and China are offering bilateral aid, they are sitting out the main push for global health coordination. “Global interventions may feel far removed from the tasks we all face as individuals, families and local communities in getting through this crisis. But if governments do not see beyond their borders and do more to coordinate an international response, we will all suffer.”