Competing interests: I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare I have received research funding from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), which supports epidemic and pandemic vaccine deployment, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds vaccine research and development for neglected and emerging infections. I was a member of the World Bank’s COVID-19 Vaccine Development Taskforce and Gavi’s working group to develop COVAX. I coauthored a proposal to launch an aggregator for late stage trials of neglected disease product development. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.