Global Health Security Conference 2022: Equity is key to preventing the next pandemic, health ministers say
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn EmailMultilateral and global cooperative efforts to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response globally must be rooted in equity to be effective, health ministers said this week at Global Health Security 2022, an international conference in Singapore. This includes equity in access to vaccines, health commodities including personal protective equipment, diagnostic testing kits and other medical tools, and access to information and data sharing, ministers from Singapore, South Africa and Uganda said during a June 29 session.
During the first acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, low- and middle-income countries quickly mobilized domestic resources to purchase personal protective equipment, COVID-19 test kits and vaccines when they became available, said Uganda’s Minister of Health, Jane Ruth Aceng, MBChB, MMED, MPH. However due to high-income countries rapidly buying up and excessively stockpiling such commodities, and in some cases instituting export bans, low- and middle-income governments were unable to access the tools they needed to protect their citizens despite political will and resources being available, Dr. Aceng said.
“Vaccines only became available in the global South when countries of the North were saturated,” said South African Minister of Health Joe Phaahla, MBChB. And when they did become available, some individuals didn’t want them, as disinformation campaigns had had time to sow the seeds of vaccine hesitancy, Singapore Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung added.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has identified many weaknesses in our preparedness and response,” Dr. Phaahla said, “most of which are in the area of equity.”
Ensuring more equitable access to needed resources
Forthcoming multilateral efforts to better prepare the world for future pandemics and outbreaks, including the establishment of a financial intermediary fund at the World Bank for pandemic preparedness and response and a potential review of the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, must address issues of inequity and ensure more equitable access to needed countermeasures for all countries, the ministers said.
This includes strengthening manufacturing capacities in low- and middle-income countries to produce personal protective equipment, diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines themselves, the ministers said.
Movements towards developing binding international agreements, such as the International Health Regulations, should focus on securing commitments from all countries and stakeholders to ensure reliable resources and in turn, close the gaps of inequity, Dr. Phaahla said.
“It’s not only about the money,” Dr. Aceng said. “There can be no better time than now with the lessons learned from COVID-19 to reexamine our systems based on equity, trust and solidarity,” she added.
Bolstering local public health capacity and system resilience
The focus of a new financial intermediary fund to raise and provide resources to primarily low- and middle-income countries for pandemic preparedness must be on transforming public health capacities at the local level, Ong said, and ensuring resilience of systems.
“The new financial intermediary fund should be able to take us further and quicker in terms of being more self-sustainable at the country level and in the sharing of information and advanced technologies,” he said.
Increased multilateralism and global cooperation are needed to successfully prevent and respond to pandemics going forward, rather than the isolationism and insular practices and policies that characterized COVID-19 responses in many countries, the ministers said.
“All of us now accept that none of us are safe unless we’re all safe,” Dr. Phaahla said.
