@Midwest - you are conflating research and developing vaccines to prevent illnesses with drug treatments meant to treat diseases. Understand they are not the same thing.
Fair enough. To the original question, should the developed world contribute to vaccine development or just the US? How should it be funded?
I believe I answered that earlier - we can't rely on for-profit companies to develop vaccines because they are inherently less profitable (and often not profitable at all) to develop than treating existing ailments. Ergo, funding is typically carried out through the public sector, either directly (e.g. via the NIH and CDC) or through federal grants to dozens of research laboratories (who often work with industry partners, and increasingly with global partners in other countries). This is our current model, and I'd merely argue that we are severely underfunding such projects - to our own detriment. Developing preventative medicine - while not profitable from the corporate perspective - has one of the greatest ROI at a population level (fewer deaths, more worker output, lower healthcare costs, multiplied across the entire population or millions or billions).
As for 'who should pay for R&D - like guitarstv you've got my scratching my head here... you seem to be coming from the perspective that the rest of the world is ripping off the United States, rather than the US being a global leader for medicine. You can view that negatively or you can view it positively. One of the core reasons why so many of the worlds most successful Rx companies are US companies is because we've maintained a deep research pipeline. This pipeline trains and attracts some of the best and brightest, who overwhelmingly stay in the US as highly paid individuals, thereby stimulating our economy. Just look at the Y/Y gains int he Rx sector for the last 6 decades.
The other factor you seem to be overlooking is that the funding source (i.e. the US Government) dictates which diseases get funding. It's very self serving. You'll notice that we spend a great deal of money on irradicating or treating 'western diseases' (e.g. MMR, Meningococcal), but far less on more tropical diseases like malaria - even though malaria infects and kill way more people globally. If you want India (for example) to suddenly start contributing more towards the R&D of treatments they're going to naturally require more focus be on diseases that impact Indians and less on ones that kill people in the lower 48.
I'm suggesting that India's lack of IP protections may be allowing for price that does virtually nothing to contribute to the cost of developing the drug. India's economy is developing and they need to respect patents/IP of other countries.
There's no need for a UN entity. Developed nations should bring pressure to bear on countries with weak IP protections. The WSJ article I tagged discussed how India is hurting the EU and itself.
Yes, we all want a level playing field, but there's a lot of scope in the phrase "bring pressure to bear" on other countries. That could mean trade partnerships with mutually agreed upon rules and standards, or it could mean bombing them until they submit to our superior force. Because we're dealing with foreign diplomacy nothing will remain in a vacuum. Do we give them vaccines for free (which we often do) under 'humanitarian aid' in a gesture of good faith ("soft power") and eliminating millions of deaths with the hopes that we will develop an ally and trading partner? Since we're already developing these treatments for our own benefit and the cost of additional production is typically very low this seems like a rather cheap way of extending our global interests. And of course there's the reality that there's only a few countries which have the resources and capacity to make the long-term investments in advanced medicine. Most of the largest economies (e.g. US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, etc) are the ones making these investments. India is rather unique among the G8 in having the largest percentage of their population in poverty. in other words, while they have a lot of financial resources, they have the most societal problems of any major nation. I'm all for India updating their IP policies - and as you noted doing so will ultimately help India - but it's pretty far down their list of national concerns.