Timely and equitable access to effective medical countermeasures that are suited to the realities of the local health context is critical to stop disease outbreaks when and where they occur.
By Els Torreele, Dr. Joanne Liu, Michel Kazatchkine
The multiple overlapping discussions underway on medical countermeasures (MCMs) — vaccines, medicines, tests, and other health technologies to prevent, detect, and control disease outbreaks — must do more than tinker in the margins of the status quo. Learning hard lessons from previous experiences that failed to achieve timely and equitable access to such health technologies in large parts of the world, we must raise the ambition and design a truly transformative MCMs platform for research and development, manufacturing, and access centered on equity from start to finish.
Timely and equitable access to effective MCMs that are suited to the realities of the local health context is critical to stop outbreaks when and where they occur. It is the only way to avoid larger epidemics, or another pandemic, that uproot people’s lives and livelihoods, as happened during COVID-19.
Already in its first 2021 report, the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response highlighted the need for an end-to-end approach to medical R&D of effective health technologies, based on common good principles and with equity built in throughout the development pipeline.