The global will to ensure that COVID-19 is a “never-again” pandemic is dissipating fast, according to many delegates attending the World Health Assembly (WHA) and its plethora of side events – threatening initiatives such as local manufacturing of vaccines. … On Friday, the WHA passed a resolution to strengthen countries’ diagnostic testing capacity, stressing support for the local production of diagnostic tools and tests in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). … Meanwhile, Wellcome Trust, one of the biggest private donors of infectious disease response, kicked off a global conversation about what needs to be done in a discussion paper released a few days back that declares: “The R&D infrastructure ecosystem for infectious disease is unfit for purpose and requires ambitions overhaul.” … Wellcome points out that “resources are not allocated to research activities efficiently or equitably with whole fields suffering long-term neglect”. Key problems include “empty pipelines” for major infectious disease threats, especially affecting low-resource settings, barriers to registration, and lack of access. “Individuals’ ability to access lifesaving products often depends more on economics and geography than on need,” the Trust points out.
Health Policy Watch
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