In Talk on UHC, NY Senator Raises Concern Over Commoditization of Healthcare 07/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman New York State Senator Jose Gustavo Rivera A New York lawmaker warned fellow parliamentarians on Wednesday to “stay as far away from the private sector as you can” when it comes to healthcare. “The main issue in the United States is that healthcare is commodified,” said New York State Senator Jose Gustavo Rivera. “It is true, the best healthcare is available in the US – that is true if you can afford it. But the majority of Americans cannot [afford it] and instead organize their entire existence around how to find the best insurance. “And I put insurance in quotation marks because having insurance does not guarantee care,” he continued. “The commoditization of healthcare is the way to ensure that the people in your country do not get the care they need and deserve.” Less than half of Americans (40%) rate the quality of healthcare in in their country as very good or good, according to a new survey released by the Beryl Institute – Ipsos PX Pulse. Moreover, despite improvements in access to health insurance following the roll out of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, roughly 30 million Americans of all ages had no health insurance in 2021, according to a report by MoneyGeek. ‘Investments in health … are key’ Rivera spoke at the conclusion of Wednesday’s UNITE Global Summit session on universal health coverage (UHC). The session was hosted by UHC2030 and focused on case studies from throughout the world for how to implement UHC. “UHC means that everyone, everywhere, can access the services they need without facing financial burden,” said UHC2030 Steering Committee Co-chair Gabriela Cuevas Barron from Mexico. “Investments in health and healthier populations are key for wider economic and social benefits.” UHC2030 Steering Committee Co-chair Gabriela Cuevas Barron Examples of efforts to roll out UHC were given from Tanzania, Chile and Zambia. In Tanzania, for example, a UHC bill was supposed to be deliberated on in November of this year. However, according to MP Neema Lugangira, discussions were pushed off after concerns with some of the nuances of the bill were raised during public hearings. “We had several discussions and felt there were concrete issues with the bill So, we, as the parliamentary committee, withdrew the bill for improvement and consideration in the areas raised,” Lugangira said. “We were hoping that by the time I would be standing here, perhaps the bill would have been passed. But in an interesting turn of events, we were able to make sure the government takes the bill back and improves on it before it is tabled in parliament. “This shows the power parliamentarians have to understand the issues and advise the government better,” she concluded. ‘Still some work to do’ Zambia, on the other hand, already rolled out the first stages of a universal health coverage plan, explained MP Givem Katuta in her remarks. The initial stage of the UHC plan includes coverage of primary care, said Katuta. But she noted that the bill was moved forward quickly between 2017 and 2018 and the country knows there is still some work to do. For example, one challenge is that the plan uses the National Health Insurance Management Authority, which works well for people who are employed but creates a gap for those who do not have some kind of job. In addition, while people in urban areas can really take advantage of the plan, including getting care at private hospitals of their choice, this has not yet been the case for those in rural areas. “We are on the right track,” Katuta said. “We are looking forward to other stakeholders coming through to spread its wings to rural areas. The goal is to have full UHC by 2030.” Chile’s representative, Marta Bravo, called on the World Health Organization to support the creation of “harmonized and unified criteria” for universal health coverage . “WHO has a powerful voice that is listened to by our government,” she said. “This is our opportunity to ask WHO to be active in this field.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. In Heated UNITE Event Session, African MPs Call for Greater Inclusion in Global Fund 07/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon A group of African parliamentarians raised a red flag on Tuesday at the UNITE Global Summit when they told representatives that they felt neglected by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which funds billions of dollars of health services in their countries. “Do African parliamentarians only get involved when we have to make an appeal, when it suits our colleagues?” asked Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira in her remarks at a session titled “The Global Fund Post 7th Replenishment – The Role of Members of Parliament and Domestic Health Financing.” Lugangira said that she was asked to make a fundraising appeal via video on behalf of the Global Fund to the United Kingdom parliament over the summer believes her intervention added value and played a key role in convincing the UK government to provide a more than $1 billion grant. However, despite being in New York in September during Global Fund’s Replenishment event at which donors pledge money for the next three years, she was not invited to attend. Global Fund instead hosted 18 heads of state and governments and many high-level officials from civil society and the private sector at the 400-person event in the city. Lugangira said that “some of my colleagues in Tanzania were surprised I was not invited” because of the video she provided and her deep commitment to public health in Tanzania. “When it is time for the glorious moment, we are not invited,” she said. Lugangira said that Global Fund could generate increased matching domestic financing and distribute its funds more effectively if it worked closely with parliaments, the way it works with civil society. “Civil society was not chosen by our UK parliamentarians to record a clip and make an appeal to parliament. It was me, a member of the African parliament,” she stressed. “It is powerful when you hear the voice of an African parliamentarian representing her people. “Don’t just use us when it suits you. Include us across the entire chain” Lugangira continued. “Parliamentarians should be involved at all levels and be recognised for the impact and power we have.” ‘Confused and surprised’ “The Global Fund Post 7th Replenishment” session on December 6 at the UNITE Global Summit Lugangira had been asked to speak during a panel hosted by the fund that was meant to celebrate the nearly $16 billion it raised in the fall and to examine the positive impact that the more than $55 billion it distributed over the past 20 years has had on health and saving lives. In Tanzania alone, the Global Fund has invested $3 billion to tackle issues of HIV, TB and malaria between 2002 and 2022. Currently, the fund has four core grants in the country totalling $608 million. According to Lugangira, since the fund became involved in her country, there has been a 68% decrease in HIV and people with the virus and a 68% increase – from 18% to 86% – of individuals with HIV enrolled in treatment programs. But after Lugangira and several other parliamentarians criticised the Global Fund for failing to properly leverage local lawmakers and called on it to shift its paradigm, Scott Boule, the Global Fund’s Senior Specialist for Parliamentary Affairs, said he was left “confused and surprised.” “At least one MP sort of implied a feeling of being only utilised when the Global Fund needs to raise funds,” Boule said, “Global Fund is supposed to be a partnership.” ‘You handcuff us’ Some parliamentarians also expressed concerns over the Global Fund model, which involves establishing a Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) committee to help distribute funds. Boule said Global Fund mandates that CCMs have broad representation, including from the government, but also from civil society, such as members of the communities that are impacted by the three core diseases. In some countries, parliamentarians sit on the CCMs, but in many countries they are not asked to do so. Moreover, parliamentarians have been ineligible to receive money to help fund their role on these committees. Zimbabwe’s Ruth Labode is one of those MPs. She is a member of her country’s CCM but said she rarely attends meetings due to lack of transport and funding. She only goes when parliament is in session and she has to be in the capital city for work anyway. Otherwise, “it’s too costly” to take part, she told Health Policy Watch. “The CCM has decided not to fund parliamentarians for meetings while they fund members from the civil society, private or any other sector,” Labode said. “The lack of funding shows that the Global Fund is not committed [to the parliamentarians]. It does not think it needs parliamentarians. And yet, when the time comes for replenishment, they are quick to find parliamentarians to lobby for their purpose.” She told Boule during the discussion that “it is about time you advocate for a parliamentary seat on every CCM in every country… If you told them to have a seat for a parliamentarian, it would happen overnight”. Another complaint was that many parliamentarians are not educated about the work of the Global Fund or its accomplishments, which could help them push for further domestic health financing. “You cannot mobilise resources when you are not informed,” said MP Peter Njume from Cameroon. “You work [directly] with the government and then expect us to ask them to be accountable. But parliamentarians are not involved. “You talk about the importance of democracy,” Njume continued. “We represent democracy, but you handcuff us, you make us become vulnerable and helpless. How do you want us to function?” “To own this agenda, we need to be well informed and educated,” Lugangira similarly added. Njume requested that the Global Fund earmark financing for a parliamentary education program. ‘Healthcare financing is a political decision’ Alex Winch, a member of Global Fund’s Advocacy, Health Financing Team speaks at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon Global Fund’s Alex Winch acknowledged that “the financing of healthcare is a political decision.” A specialist on Global Fund’s Advocacy, Health Financing Team, he said it is important to understand that the vast majority of the fund’s resources do come from governments prioritising money. “Eighty percent of funding comes from the G7 and the European commission,” explained Boule. “Eleven percent comes from other governments around the world. And 9% comes from the private sector.” To date, the Global Fund is providing 30% of international financing for HIV, 76% for TB and 63% for malaria. The fund gives more money for the battle against TB and malaria than anyone in the world. In addition, about a third of its funding is now going to reward strengthening underlying health systems. The funding has been effective, at least according to the data. Life expectancy, for example, has increased as a result. In sub-Sahara Africa alone, average life expectancy jumped from 52.3 in 2002 to 66.7 in 2019, in large part because of the fund’s efforts. During 2021 in countries and regions where Global Fund invests, some 12.5 million people were reached with HIV prevention services; 670,000 mothers living with HIV received medicine to keep them alive and prevent transmitting HIV to their babies; another 5.3 million people were tested for TB; 110,000 were given treatment for drug-resistant TB; and 133 million mosquito nets were distributed to protect families from malaria, amongst many other efforts. “All of this is made possible by our replenishment,” Boule told Health Policy Watch. “Every third year, we raise funds for the subsequent three years.” Replenishment this year was held on 21 September in New York. Some 47 public and 27 private sector donors pledged $15.7 billion out of the target of $18 billion that the organisation had set to raise for the 2023-2025 period. Boule said that efforts were continuing to try to fill the gap. ‘We are de-investing in health’ But Zimbabwe’s Daniel Molokele said that while the results are stunning, he believes African governments have become too “dependent” on the Global Fund, which puts 72% of its money towards the continent. “I don’t think it is good for Africa, this over-reliance on the Global Fund,” Molokele said. He said that Global Fund’s filling the gap lets off the hook governments who then do not have to commit to fund health in their own countries. In Zimbabwe, he said, domestic health financing dropped several percentage points in the last year. “We are de-investing in health,” Molokele said. Boule explained that recipient countries are required to provide a certain percentage of matching money to receive a grant from the Global Fund, though he said that the fund is often more flexible with low-income countries about achieving their targets. He said that despite the economic challenges the world is facing in the aftermath of COVID-19 and as the war is raging in Ukraine, the fund did see around a 30% increase across the board in domestic health financing from recipient countries. ‘It was ambitious’ Another concern raised from the floor came from French MP Jean-Francois Mbaye, who expressed “disappointment” that his country invested $1.6 billion towards a goal it thought was $18 billion but that fell short “It was ambitious,” Boule admitted to Health Policy Watch. “We did raise $15.7 and that is by far the largest amount we ever raised.” The gap came from some of Global Fund’s largest donors not increasing their gifts by the 30% that the fund expected. “The United States, Germany, Japan, Canada and the European Commission all did increase by 30%,” Boule said. “France increased by 23% and Italy increased by 15%. “The only country amongst our largest donors that went down was the UK, although it still pledged $1.2 billion,” Boule continued. “So we very much had strong support from our donors, and in particular, our largest donors.” Number of donors for Global Fund’s 7th Replenishment On the other hand, faltering exchange rates, and hosting the replenishment seven months after the start of the Ukraine war amid rising interest rates had a negative impact. To illustrate if the pledging session had been held on February 23, 2022, which is the day Global Fund had its preparatory meeting, because of exchange rates, it would have raised around $857 million more. In general, Winch said that achieving funding in the current fiscal environment is becoming increasingly more challenging. He cited a recent report by the World Bank that highlighted how even more countries will find it hard to invest in health or in even sustain existing levels of health investment. He said that “an uncertain global macro-economic environment threatens domestic financing for health.” ‘We need to crowd more resources into health’ Boule said that he plans to take some of the parliamentarians’ concerns back to Geneva, such as providing resources for parliamentarians to sit on CCMs and perhaps developing a fixed parliamentary position on the committees. “I wasn’t aware of the point that Honorable Ruth Labode was making from Zimbabwe, that other members of the CCMs received some sort of support and she did not,” Boule said. He also said he would be interested in finding ways to better involve parliamentary feedback as another means to ensure that the fund is asking the right questions and distributing resources in an optimal way. “Our good results are due to a lot of African political leaders, including parliamentarians, really building and sustaining political will to prioritise health,” Boule said. “It is even harder now with food insecurity, debt crisis and rising interest rates. But we are making the point that even now we need to crowd more resources into health.” Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. US Wants WTO to Delay Decision on TRIPS Waiver Extension for COVID-19 Tests and Treatment 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan US Trade Representative Katherine Tai The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office announced on Tuesday that it supports extending the deadline on whether the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. Trade ministers adopted the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement in June, giving members scope to diversify the production of COVID-19 vaccines and override the exclusive effect of patents through a targeted waiver over the next five years. The TRIPS Council has been discussing whether this should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. The US decision was informed by wide-ranging consultations over the past five months with over 24 groups with opposing views on the issue, the USTR said in a statement. While all these groups “shared a concern with saving lives, and with striking a balance between the need to promote innovation in these sectors and the need to promote access to the products of innovation”, there were “key differences”. In light of the differing views, the USTR will ask the US International Trade Commission (USITC) to “launch an investigation into COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics and provide information on market dynamics to help inform the discussion around supply and demand, price points, the relationship between testing and treating, and production and access”, the USTR said in a statement. “Over the past five months, USTR officials held robust and constructive consultations with Congress, government experts, a wide range of stakeholders, multilateral institutions, and WTO Members,” said Ambassador Katherine Tai. “Real questions remain on a range of issues, and the additional time, coupled with information from the USITC, will help the world make a more informed decision on whether extending the Ministerial Decision to COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics would result in increased access to those products,” added Tai. “Transparency is critical and USTR will continue to consult with Congress, stakeholders, and others as we continue working to end the pandemic and support the global economic recovery.” Those in favour of extending the Ministerial agreement “acknowledge a lack of global demand for COVID-19 products, but they believe that market dynamics are suppressing effective demand”, according to the USTR. Opponents’ concerns include that the extension would “allow countries with anti-competitive approaches to innovation, such as China” to “unfairly obtain and use American innovation to benefit their domestic economies”, harming “American industry and workers by undermining investment and research and development”. The USITC study will explore key issues including: An overview of the products, focusing on WHO-approved COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including key components, the production process, intellectual property protections, and the supply chain (including the level of diversification in the supply chain); The global manufacturing industry for these products, including information on key producing countries, major firms, and production data, if available; The global market for COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including information on demand and, to the extent practicable, an assessment of where unmet demand exists for key products and contributing factors; market segmentation; and supply accumulation and distribution; Data and information on global trade in COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, if available, or if not, data and information on global trade in diagnostics and therapeutics generally; and A brief overview of the relevant aspects of the TRIPS Agreement and the UN Medicine Patent Pool (MPP) and a listing of countries seeking to use the Ministerial Decision and those utilizing access to COVID-19 medicines under the MPP. Meanwhile, the US reaffirmed the right of its trading partners to “exercise the full range of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement, such as in Articles 30, 31, and 31bis, and the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, as well as the flexibilities in the Ministerial Decision”. ‘Multilateralism’ Essential in Battle Against Pandemics, Says President of Portuguese Parliament 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. “To manage [a fast response] requires the efforts of all of us – requires multilateralism,” he said. Silvo, a sociologist and university professor, who has served as president since 2002, told the crowd of more than 30 parliamentarians from around the world and several health officials that “the role of parliamentarians is irreplaceable.” Silvo spoke from the center of the Senate Chamber. He said “the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we should be prepared for the unexpected,” including “what may come up when we least expect it and, in the form, we least expect it to happen.” He called on governments to have deep ties with scientists and professionals in the health arena, but admitted that ultimately, they cannot run the country in the time of a health crisis. Only politicians, he said, can evaluate issues of the economy and democracy alongside health. “There is not an expert that waves us from our moral and political responsibilities,” Silvo said. The theme of the UNITE event, which kicked off on Monday and runs through Wednesday evening, is “from pandemic to prosperity.” He said that “I like the optimistic tone of this theme” but that parliamentarians must be attuned to the challenges that their countries face. Healthcare, he noted, is one of the objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, but “we all know that the 17 SDGs are interdependent.” Now, he said, is the time for parliamentarians to evaluate their governments’ efforts toward achieving these SDGs and to redirect them if they are off on their goals. “We have to assess what we have achieved so far, to consolidate these achievements, and correct what has to be corrected or whatever is lagging behind,” Silvo said. “This is also work that is up to parliamentarians to do.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Indonesia Bans Extramarital Sex 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan Indonesia’s parliament passed a new criminal code that bans extramarital sex and criminalises abortion except for rape survivors on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The code applies to both citizens and visitors, and those who have sex outside marriage face up to a year in prison. Indonesia’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and its tourism industry has warned that the code could dampen enthusiasm from international tourists. However, pre- and extra-marital sex can only be reported by close relatives: a parent, child or spouse. There has been speculation that the code will be used particularly to prosecute LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is banned in the predominantly Muslim country, which has become increasingly conservative in the past few years. The new code also prohibits anyone from insulting Indonesia’s president (transgressors face up to three years in prison), spreading views that contradict state ideology, “black magic”, and staging protests without permission. The code was passed unanimously and replaces a code adopted after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1946. However, it is expected to only come into force in three years’ time once regulations have been drawn up to enforce its provisions. The country tried to pass the code in 2019 but faced protests, particularly from students. About 100 people reportedly gathered outside the parliament in Jakarta to protest against the code. Image Credits: Nick Agus Arya/ Unsplash. MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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In Heated UNITE Event Session, African MPs Call for Greater Inclusion in Global Fund 07/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon A group of African parliamentarians raised a red flag on Tuesday at the UNITE Global Summit when they told representatives that they felt neglected by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which funds billions of dollars of health services in their countries. “Do African parliamentarians only get involved when we have to make an appeal, when it suits our colleagues?” asked Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira in her remarks at a session titled “The Global Fund Post 7th Replenishment – The Role of Members of Parliament and Domestic Health Financing.” Lugangira said that she was asked to make a fundraising appeal via video on behalf of the Global Fund to the United Kingdom parliament over the summer believes her intervention added value and played a key role in convincing the UK government to provide a more than $1 billion grant. However, despite being in New York in September during Global Fund’s Replenishment event at which donors pledge money for the next three years, she was not invited to attend. Global Fund instead hosted 18 heads of state and governments and many high-level officials from civil society and the private sector at the 400-person event in the city. Lugangira said that “some of my colleagues in Tanzania were surprised I was not invited” because of the video she provided and her deep commitment to public health in Tanzania. “When it is time for the glorious moment, we are not invited,” she said. Lugangira said that Global Fund could generate increased matching domestic financing and distribute its funds more effectively if it worked closely with parliaments, the way it works with civil society. “Civil society was not chosen by our UK parliamentarians to record a clip and make an appeal to parliament. It was me, a member of the African parliament,” she stressed. “It is powerful when you hear the voice of an African parliamentarian representing her people. “Don’t just use us when it suits you. Include us across the entire chain” Lugangira continued. “Parliamentarians should be involved at all levels and be recognised for the impact and power we have.” ‘Confused and surprised’ “The Global Fund Post 7th Replenishment” session on December 6 at the UNITE Global Summit Lugangira had been asked to speak during a panel hosted by the fund that was meant to celebrate the nearly $16 billion it raised in the fall and to examine the positive impact that the more than $55 billion it distributed over the past 20 years has had on health and saving lives. In Tanzania alone, the Global Fund has invested $3 billion to tackle issues of HIV, TB and malaria between 2002 and 2022. Currently, the fund has four core grants in the country totalling $608 million. According to Lugangira, since the fund became involved in her country, there has been a 68% decrease in HIV and people with the virus and a 68% increase – from 18% to 86% – of individuals with HIV enrolled in treatment programs. But after Lugangira and several other parliamentarians criticised the Global Fund for failing to properly leverage local lawmakers and called on it to shift its paradigm, Scott Boule, the Global Fund’s Senior Specialist for Parliamentary Affairs, said he was left “confused and surprised.” “At least one MP sort of implied a feeling of being only utilised when the Global Fund needs to raise funds,” Boule said, “Global Fund is supposed to be a partnership.” ‘You handcuff us’ Some parliamentarians also expressed concerns over the Global Fund model, which involves establishing a Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) committee to help distribute funds. Boule said Global Fund mandates that CCMs have broad representation, including from the government, but also from civil society, such as members of the communities that are impacted by the three core diseases. In some countries, parliamentarians sit on the CCMs, but in many countries they are not asked to do so. Moreover, parliamentarians have been ineligible to receive money to help fund their role on these committees. Zimbabwe’s Ruth Labode is one of those MPs. She is a member of her country’s CCM but said she rarely attends meetings due to lack of transport and funding. She only goes when parliament is in session and she has to be in the capital city for work anyway. Otherwise, “it’s too costly” to take part, she told Health Policy Watch. “The CCM has decided not to fund parliamentarians for meetings while they fund members from the civil society, private or any other sector,” Labode said. “The lack of funding shows that the Global Fund is not committed [to the parliamentarians]. It does not think it needs parliamentarians. And yet, when the time comes for replenishment, they are quick to find parliamentarians to lobby for their purpose.” She told Boule during the discussion that “it is about time you advocate for a parliamentary seat on every CCM in every country… If you told them to have a seat for a parliamentarian, it would happen overnight”. Another complaint was that many parliamentarians are not educated about the work of the Global Fund or its accomplishments, which could help them push for further domestic health financing. “You cannot mobilise resources when you are not informed,” said MP Peter Njume from Cameroon. “You work [directly] with the government and then expect us to ask them to be accountable. But parliamentarians are not involved. “You talk about the importance of democracy,” Njume continued. “We represent democracy, but you handcuff us, you make us become vulnerable and helpless. How do you want us to function?” “To own this agenda, we need to be well informed and educated,” Lugangira similarly added. Njume requested that the Global Fund earmark financing for a parliamentary education program. ‘Healthcare financing is a political decision’ Alex Winch, a member of Global Fund’s Advocacy, Health Financing Team speaks at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon Global Fund’s Alex Winch acknowledged that “the financing of healthcare is a political decision.” A specialist on Global Fund’s Advocacy, Health Financing Team, he said it is important to understand that the vast majority of the fund’s resources do come from governments prioritising money. “Eighty percent of funding comes from the G7 and the European commission,” explained Boule. “Eleven percent comes from other governments around the world. And 9% comes from the private sector.” To date, the Global Fund is providing 30% of international financing for HIV, 76% for TB and 63% for malaria. The fund gives more money for the battle against TB and malaria than anyone in the world. In addition, about a third of its funding is now going to reward strengthening underlying health systems. The funding has been effective, at least according to the data. Life expectancy, for example, has increased as a result. In sub-Sahara Africa alone, average life expectancy jumped from 52.3 in 2002 to 66.7 in 2019, in large part because of the fund’s efforts. During 2021 in countries and regions where Global Fund invests, some 12.5 million people were reached with HIV prevention services; 670,000 mothers living with HIV received medicine to keep them alive and prevent transmitting HIV to their babies; another 5.3 million people were tested for TB; 110,000 were given treatment for drug-resistant TB; and 133 million mosquito nets were distributed to protect families from malaria, amongst many other efforts. “All of this is made possible by our replenishment,” Boule told Health Policy Watch. “Every third year, we raise funds for the subsequent three years.” Replenishment this year was held on 21 September in New York. Some 47 public and 27 private sector donors pledged $15.7 billion out of the target of $18 billion that the organisation had set to raise for the 2023-2025 period. Boule said that efforts were continuing to try to fill the gap. ‘We are de-investing in health’ But Zimbabwe’s Daniel Molokele said that while the results are stunning, he believes African governments have become too “dependent” on the Global Fund, which puts 72% of its money towards the continent. “I don’t think it is good for Africa, this over-reliance on the Global Fund,” Molokele said. He said that Global Fund’s filling the gap lets off the hook governments who then do not have to commit to fund health in their own countries. In Zimbabwe, he said, domestic health financing dropped several percentage points in the last year. “We are de-investing in health,” Molokele said. Boule explained that recipient countries are required to provide a certain percentage of matching money to receive a grant from the Global Fund, though he said that the fund is often more flexible with low-income countries about achieving their targets. He said that despite the economic challenges the world is facing in the aftermath of COVID-19 and as the war is raging in Ukraine, the fund did see around a 30% increase across the board in domestic health financing from recipient countries. ‘It was ambitious’ Another concern raised from the floor came from French MP Jean-Francois Mbaye, who expressed “disappointment” that his country invested $1.6 billion towards a goal it thought was $18 billion but that fell short “It was ambitious,” Boule admitted to Health Policy Watch. “We did raise $15.7 and that is by far the largest amount we ever raised.” The gap came from some of Global Fund’s largest donors not increasing their gifts by the 30% that the fund expected. “The United States, Germany, Japan, Canada and the European Commission all did increase by 30%,” Boule said. “France increased by 23% and Italy increased by 15%. “The only country amongst our largest donors that went down was the UK, although it still pledged $1.2 billion,” Boule continued. “So we very much had strong support from our donors, and in particular, our largest donors.” Number of donors for Global Fund’s 7th Replenishment On the other hand, faltering exchange rates, and hosting the replenishment seven months after the start of the Ukraine war amid rising interest rates had a negative impact. To illustrate if the pledging session had been held on February 23, 2022, which is the day Global Fund had its preparatory meeting, because of exchange rates, it would have raised around $857 million more. In general, Winch said that achieving funding in the current fiscal environment is becoming increasingly more challenging. He cited a recent report by the World Bank that highlighted how even more countries will find it hard to invest in health or in even sustain existing levels of health investment. He said that “an uncertain global macro-economic environment threatens domestic financing for health.” ‘We need to crowd more resources into health’ Boule said that he plans to take some of the parliamentarians’ concerns back to Geneva, such as providing resources for parliamentarians to sit on CCMs and perhaps developing a fixed parliamentary position on the committees. “I wasn’t aware of the point that Honorable Ruth Labode was making from Zimbabwe, that other members of the CCMs received some sort of support and she did not,” Boule said. He also said he would be interested in finding ways to better involve parliamentary feedback as another means to ensure that the fund is asking the right questions and distributing resources in an optimal way. “Our good results are due to a lot of African political leaders, including parliamentarians, really building and sustaining political will to prioritise health,” Boule said. “It is even harder now with food insecurity, debt crisis and rising interest rates. But we are making the point that even now we need to crowd more resources into health.” Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. US Wants WTO to Delay Decision on TRIPS Waiver Extension for COVID-19 Tests and Treatment 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan US Trade Representative Katherine Tai The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office announced on Tuesday that it supports extending the deadline on whether the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. Trade ministers adopted the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement in June, giving members scope to diversify the production of COVID-19 vaccines and override the exclusive effect of patents through a targeted waiver over the next five years. The TRIPS Council has been discussing whether this should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. The US decision was informed by wide-ranging consultations over the past five months with over 24 groups with opposing views on the issue, the USTR said in a statement. While all these groups “shared a concern with saving lives, and with striking a balance between the need to promote innovation in these sectors and the need to promote access to the products of innovation”, there were “key differences”. In light of the differing views, the USTR will ask the US International Trade Commission (USITC) to “launch an investigation into COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics and provide information on market dynamics to help inform the discussion around supply and demand, price points, the relationship between testing and treating, and production and access”, the USTR said in a statement. “Over the past five months, USTR officials held robust and constructive consultations with Congress, government experts, a wide range of stakeholders, multilateral institutions, and WTO Members,” said Ambassador Katherine Tai. “Real questions remain on a range of issues, and the additional time, coupled with information from the USITC, will help the world make a more informed decision on whether extending the Ministerial Decision to COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics would result in increased access to those products,” added Tai. “Transparency is critical and USTR will continue to consult with Congress, stakeholders, and others as we continue working to end the pandemic and support the global economic recovery.” Those in favour of extending the Ministerial agreement “acknowledge a lack of global demand for COVID-19 products, but they believe that market dynamics are suppressing effective demand”, according to the USTR. Opponents’ concerns include that the extension would “allow countries with anti-competitive approaches to innovation, such as China” to “unfairly obtain and use American innovation to benefit their domestic economies”, harming “American industry and workers by undermining investment and research and development”. The USITC study will explore key issues including: An overview of the products, focusing on WHO-approved COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including key components, the production process, intellectual property protections, and the supply chain (including the level of diversification in the supply chain); The global manufacturing industry for these products, including information on key producing countries, major firms, and production data, if available; The global market for COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including information on demand and, to the extent practicable, an assessment of where unmet demand exists for key products and contributing factors; market segmentation; and supply accumulation and distribution; Data and information on global trade in COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, if available, or if not, data and information on global trade in diagnostics and therapeutics generally; and A brief overview of the relevant aspects of the TRIPS Agreement and the UN Medicine Patent Pool (MPP) and a listing of countries seeking to use the Ministerial Decision and those utilizing access to COVID-19 medicines under the MPP. Meanwhile, the US reaffirmed the right of its trading partners to “exercise the full range of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement, such as in Articles 30, 31, and 31bis, and the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, as well as the flexibilities in the Ministerial Decision”. ‘Multilateralism’ Essential in Battle Against Pandemics, Says President of Portuguese Parliament 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. “To manage [a fast response] requires the efforts of all of us – requires multilateralism,” he said. Silvo, a sociologist and university professor, who has served as president since 2002, told the crowd of more than 30 parliamentarians from around the world and several health officials that “the role of parliamentarians is irreplaceable.” Silvo spoke from the center of the Senate Chamber. He said “the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we should be prepared for the unexpected,” including “what may come up when we least expect it and, in the form, we least expect it to happen.” He called on governments to have deep ties with scientists and professionals in the health arena, but admitted that ultimately, they cannot run the country in the time of a health crisis. Only politicians, he said, can evaluate issues of the economy and democracy alongside health. “There is not an expert that waves us from our moral and political responsibilities,” Silvo said. The theme of the UNITE event, which kicked off on Monday and runs through Wednesday evening, is “from pandemic to prosperity.” He said that “I like the optimistic tone of this theme” but that parliamentarians must be attuned to the challenges that their countries face. Healthcare, he noted, is one of the objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, but “we all know that the 17 SDGs are interdependent.” Now, he said, is the time for parliamentarians to evaluate their governments’ efforts toward achieving these SDGs and to redirect them if they are off on their goals. “We have to assess what we have achieved so far, to consolidate these achievements, and correct what has to be corrected or whatever is lagging behind,” Silvo said. “This is also work that is up to parliamentarians to do.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Indonesia Bans Extramarital Sex 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan Indonesia’s parliament passed a new criminal code that bans extramarital sex and criminalises abortion except for rape survivors on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The code applies to both citizens and visitors, and those who have sex outside marriage face up to a year in prison. Indonesia’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and its tourism industry has warned that the code could dampen enthusiasm from international tourists. However, pre- and extra-marital sex can only be reported by close relatives: a parent, child or spouse. There has been speculation that the code will be used particularly to prosecute LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is banned in the predominantly Muslim country, which has become increasingly conservative in the past few years. The new code also prohibits anyone from insulting Indonesia’s president (transgressors face up to three years in prison), spreading views that contradict state ideology, “black magic”, and staging protests without permission. The code was passed unanimously and replaces a code adopted after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1946. However, it is expected to only come into force in three years’ time once regulations have been drawn up to enforce its provisions. The country tried to pass the code in 2019 but faced protests, particularly from students. About 100 people reportedly gathered outside the parliament in Jakarta to protest against the code. Image Credits: Nick Agus Arya/ Unsplash. MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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US Wants WTO to Delay Decision on TRIPS Waiver Extension for COVID-19 Tests and Treatment 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan US Trade Representative Katherine Tai The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office announced on Tuesday that it supports extending the deadline on whether the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. Trade ministers adopted the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement in June, giving members scope to diversify the production of COVID-19 vaccines and override the exclusive effect of patents through a targeted waiver over the next five years. The TRIPS Council has been discussing whether this should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. The US decision was informed by wide-ranging consultations over the past five months with over 24 groups with opposing views on the issue, the USTR said in a statement. While all these groups “shared a concern with saving lives, and with striking a balance between the need to promote innovation in these sectors and the need to promote access to the products of innovation”, there were “key differences”. In light of the differing views, the USTR will ask the US International Trade Commission (USITC) to “launch an investigation into COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics and provide information on market dynamics to help inform the discussion around supply and demand, price points, the relationship between testing and treating, and production and access”, the USTR said in a statement. “Over the past five months, USTR officials held robust and constructive consultations with Congress, government experts, a wide range of stakeholders, multilateral institutions, and WTO Members,” said Ambassador Katherine Tai. “Real questions remain on a range of issues, and the additional time, coupled with information from the USITC, will help the world make a more informed decision on whether extending the Ministerial Decision to COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics would result in increased access to those products,” added Tai. “Transparency is critical and USTR will continue to consult with Congress, stakeholders, and others as we continue working to end the pandemic and support the global economic recovery.” Those in favour of extending the Ministerial agreement “acknowledge a lack of global demand for COVID-19 products, but they believe that market dynamics are suppressing effective demand”, according to the USTR. Opponents’ concerns include that the extension would “allow countries with anti-competitive approaches to innovation, such as China” to “unfairly obtain and use American innovation to benefit their domestic economies”, harming “American industry and workers by undermining investment and research and development”. The USITC study will explore key issues including: An overview of the products, focusing on WHO-approved COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including key components, the production process, intellectual property protections, and the supply chain (including the level of diversification in the supply chain); The global manufacturing industry for these products, including information on key producing countries, major firms, and production data, if available; The global market for COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including information on demand and, to the extent practicable, an assessment of where unmet demand exists for key products and contributing factors; market segmentation; and supply accumulation and distribution; Data and information on global trade in COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, if available, or if not, data and information on global trade in diagnostics and therapeutics generally; and A brief overview of the relevant aspects of the TRIPS Agreement and the UN Medicine Patent Pool (MPP) and a listing of countries seeking to use the Ministerial Decision and those utilizing access to COVID-19 medicines under the MPP. Meanwhile, the US reaffirmed the right of its trading partners to “exercise the full range of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement, such as in Articles 30, 31, and 31bis, and the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, as well as the flexibilities in the Ministerial Decision”. ‘Multilateralism’ Essential in Battle Against Pandemics, Says President of Portuguese Parliament 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. “To manage [a fast response] requires the efforts of all of us – requires multilateralism,” he said. Silvo, a sociologist and university professor, who has served as president since 2002, told the crowd of more than 30 parliamentarians from around the world and several health officials that “the role of parliamentarians is irreplaceable.” Silvo spoke from the center of the Senate Chamber. He said “the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we should be prepared for the unexpected,” including “what may come up when we least expect it and, in the form, we least expect it to happen.” He called on governments to have deep ties with scientists and professionals in the health arena, but admitted that ultimately, they cannot run the country in the time of a health crisis. Only politicians, he said, can evaluate issues of the economy and democracy alongside health. “There is not an expert that waves us from our moral and political responsibilities,” Silvo said. The theme of the UNITE event, which kicked off on Monday and runs through Wednesday evening, is “from pandemic to prosperity.” He said that “I like the optimistic tone of this theme” but that parliamentarians must be attuned to the challenges that their countries face. Healthcare, he noted, is one of the objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, but “we all know that the 17 SDGs are interdependent.” Now, he said, is the time for parliamentarians to evaluate their governments’ efforts toward achieving these SDGs and to redirect them if they are off on their goals. “We have to assess what we have achieved so far, to consolidate these achievements, and correct what has to be corrected or whatever is lagging behind,” Silvo said. “This is also work that is up to parliamentarians to do.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Indonesia Bans Extramarital Sex 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan Indonesia’s parliament passed a new criminal code that bans extramarital sex and criminalises abortion except for rape survivors on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The code applies to both citizens and visitors, and those who have sex outside marriage face up to a year in prison. Indonesia’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and its tourism industry has warned that the code could dampen enthusiasm from international tourists. However, pre- and extra-marital sex can only be reported by close relatives: a parent, child or spouse. There has been speculation that the code will be used particularly to prosecute LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is banned in the predominantly Muslim country, which has become increasingly conservative in the past few years. The new code also prohibits anyone from insulting Indonesia’s president (transgressors face up to three years in prison), spreading views that contradict state ideology, “black magic”, and staging protests without permission. The code was passed unanimously and replaces a code adopted after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1946. However, it is expected to only come into force in three years’ time once regulations have been drawn up to enforce its provisions. The country tried to pass the code in 2019 but faced protests, particularly from students. About 100 people reportedly gathered outside the parliament in Jakarta to protest against the code. Image Credits: Nick Agus Arya/ Unsplash. MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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‘Multilateralism’ Essential in Battle Against Pandemics, Says President of Portuguese Parliament 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. “To manage [a fast response] requires the efforts of all of us – requires multilateralism,” he said. Silvo, a sociologist and university professor, who has served as president since 2002, told the crowd of more than 30 parliamentarians from around the world and several health officials that “the role of parliamentarians is irreplaceable.” Silvo spoke from the center of the Senate Chamber. He said “the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we should be prepared for the unexpected,” including “what may come up when we least expect it and, in the form, we least expect it to happen.” He called on governments to have deep ties with scientists and professionals in the health arena, but admitted that ultimately, they cannot run the country in the time of a health crisis. Only politicians, he said, can evaluate issues of the economy and democracy alongside health. “There is not an expert that waves us from our moral and political responsibilities,” Silvo said. The theme of the UNITE event, which kicked off on Monday and runs through Wednesday evening, is “from pandemic to prosperity.” He said that “I like the optimistic tone of this theme” but that parliamentarians must be attuned to the challenges that their countries face. Healthcare, he noted, is one of the objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, but “we all know that the 17 SDGs are interdependent.” Now, he said, is the time for parliamentarians to evaluate their governments’ efforts toward achieving these SDGs and to redirect them if they are off on their goals. “We have to assess what we have achieved so far, to consolidate these achievements, and correct what has to be corrected or whatever is lagging behind,” Silvo said. “This is also work that is up to parliamentarians to do.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Indonesia Bans Extramarital Sex 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan Indonesia’s parliament passed a new criminal code that bans extramarital sex and criminalises abortion except for rape survivors on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The code applies to both citizens and visitors, and those who have sex outside marriage face up to a year in prison. Indonesia’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and its tourism industry has warned that the code could dampen enthusiasm from international tourists. However, pre- and extra-marital sex can only be reported by close relatives: a parent, child or spouse. There has been speculation that the code will be used particularly to prosecute LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is banned in the predominantly Muslim country, which has become increasingly conservative in the past few years. The new code also prohibits anyone from insulting Indonesia’s president (transgressors face up to three years in prison), spreading views that contradict state ideology, “black magic”, and staging protests without permission. The code was passed unanimously and replaces a code adopted after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1946. However, it is expected to only come into force in three years’ time once regulations have been drawn up to enforce its provisions. The country tried to pass the code in 2019 but faced protests, particularly from students. About 100 people reportedly gathered outside the parliament in Jakarta to protest against the code. Image Credits: Nick Agus Arya/ Unsplash. MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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Indonesia Bans Extramarital Sex 06/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan Indonesia’s parliament passed a new criminal code that bans extramarital sex and criminalises abortion except for rape survivors on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The code applies to both citizens and visitors, and those who have sex outside marriage face up to a year in prison. Indonesia’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and its tourism industry has warned that the code could dampen enthusiasm from international tourists. However, pre- and extra-marital sex can only be reported by close relatives: a parent, child or spouse. There has been speculation that the code will be used particularly to prosecute LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is banned in the predominantly Muslim country, which has become increasingly conservative in the past few years. The new code also prohibits anyone from insulting Indonesia’s president (transgressors face up to three years in prison), spreading views that contradict state ideology, “black magic”, and staging protests without permission. The code was passed unanimously and replaces a code adopted after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1946. However, it is expected to only come into force in three years’ time once regulations have been drawn up to enforce its provisions. The country tried to pass the code in 2019 but faced protests, particularly from students. About 100 people reportedly gathered outside the parliament in Jakarta to protest against the code. Image Credits: Nick Agus Arya/ Unsplash. MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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MPs to WHO: If You Want Pandemic Treaty Implemented, Engage with Us 06/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at Harm Reduction International, who opened a session on the subject of the treaty at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon on Monday. “Members of parliament are not systematically engaged. The conceptual zero-draft continues to have limited details regarding civil society.” The UNITE session took place as members of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) kicked-off their own meeting in Geneva. Last year, at a special meeting of the World Health Assembly, participants resolved to create an outline for how to manage the prevention, preparedness and response to any future pandemics. The INB was appointed in February to write the first draft. This draft was presented to member states last month and is being further developed during the current meeting. The expectation is that it will be completed by WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024. But the parliamentarians at the UNITE event said they felt left out of the process, when ultimately it is up to them to pass the legislation to actually implement WHO initiatives and policies, even if governments approve them. Parliamentarians are also generally responsible for budget allocations. In October, a collaboration agreement was signed between WHO and the UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health to expand outreach to the world’s elected politicians on burning global health priorities. But exactly how this MOU will ultimately play out is still to be determined. Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo on December 5, 2022 “There is no consensus without the participation of civil society,” stressed Uruguay MP Luis Enrique Gallo. “If you want legislation that brings together all the lessons learned from the pandemic, we have to work with the opinions of states, the opinions of national parliaments, of community leaders, academics, scientists etc.” Gallo bemoaned that he was only made aware of the pandemic treaty through UNITE and not directly by WHO. “How is it that I am an MP linked to the health sector for 20 years and I did not know that this was being discussed by the most major health organization in the world?” Gallo asked. MP Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe on December 5, 2022 Another MP, Ruth Labode of Zimbabwe, expressed similar sentiments. “When I heard about it, I started Googling about the pandemic treaty,” Labode said. “It’s not a bad thing. “But if you ask MPs in this room if they really know about it, the details about it, no one knows. “The treaty is stuck in Geneva,” she continued. “We have WHO offices in our area. How come no one is talking about it there?” Gallo said that it is parliamentarians’ jobs to hold their governments accountable and that after some of the mistakes of COVID, the pandemic treaty could be a tough sell. “There was the COVAX fund and we paid into that fund, but we never got the vaccines,” Gallo said. “They were late. There were not enough. Whatever it was, the end result was not good. We do not want to repeat that.” Case study: Uruguay “The COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the fragility of the national health systems around the world, but the fragility of democratic institutions across the world,” said Georgian MP Mariam Jashi. “Even countries with stronger health systems and older, more established democracies struggled.” She cited a report by Freedom House, which found that since the start of the pandemic in December 2019, the status of human rights and democracy had deteriorated in more than 80 countries. Georgian MP Mariam Jashi Uruguay is a country of only 3.5 million people. According to Gallo, in the first waves, the government managed to implement a strong and successful COVID response. “There are integrated private and public health sectors so we have equitable access to healthcare,” Gallo explained. In addition, he added that the health system and civil society leaders were at first brought around the decision-making table and played a key role in COVID-19 crisis management. A team of 50 scientists were recruited to draft recommendations for the executive power and mandates were made based on these. But overtime, he said, the situation shifted. In 2020, Uruguay had only 181 people die of COVID-19 or related illnesses. In January, February and March of the next year, 793 people died. The scientists suggested another lockdown of 200 days because infection was rapidly spreading, but their advice was this time ignored. In April there were 1,600 deaths. In May there were 1,800. “We were once the country that best managed the pandemic and then we were the country with the worst figures in terms of COVID deaths per capita on earth,” Gallo said. The reason: “There was no longer any social dialogue,” Gallo claimed. He said, “We need to learn to listen. Decision makers need to learn how to listen and to take into account several opinions. And they need to leave room for the people and organizations that are on the front lines.” “We have to ensure that MPs are more empowered,” Jashi stressed. The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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Keep Momentum on Pandemic ‘Treaty’, Urges Tedros 05/12/2022 Kerry Cullinan INB co-chair Precious Matsoso and Dr Tedros Keep the momentum to negotiate a pandemic instrument, urged Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the start of the third meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) on Monday. “The conceptual zero-draft that your bureau has developed is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. “As we move to a new phase of this process, I urge you to maintain momentum.” Almost exactly a year ago, a special meeting of the World Health Assembly resolved to negotiate a treaty to outline the future global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Members of the INB were appointed in February and developed the draft in record time, presenting it to member states in late November. Support for draft – but with more detail At Monday’s meeting, most member states expressed support for the draft as the basis for a ‘zero draft’ to launch official negotiations on the first of the three-day meeting, but many thought the draft was too general. “I’m very happy with the common voice in this room that the document we provided you with is a good basis for the next steps,” said INB co-chair Roland Driece. “Nobody said it was not and most of you think that, with improvements or alterations, it could serve in an improved way as a zero draft for negotiations next year.” But, Driece added, most member states “wanted to have more elaborated text” that also had more legal terminology and definitions. “Furthermore, many of you said this conceptual zero draft has a lot of good starting points, but we need to focus on the real priorities, focus on the issues that have the most impact and most of you said that is because May 2024 is coming rather soon,” added Driece. INB co-chair Roland Driece The body has until the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, a mere 17 months, in which to develop and present an agreement. In that regard, Tedros announced that he has asked Dr Jaouard Mahjour to continue to co-ordinate the INB’s secretariat. Mahjour’s contract as WHO’s Assistant Director-General for emergency preparedness and international health regulations ended on the last day of November. “I have asked Dr Mahjour to continue as head of the secretarial team for the INB and the [International Health Regulations] amendment process. The team established to support your work has made me proud, with their delivery and efficiency. Time is short, and there is much work to do,” added Tedros. The Group of Friends of the Pandemic Treaty, a group of 43 countries from different regions of the world, called for the treaty to be “an ambitious legally binding agreement which has a real-world impact in terms of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”. The US, UK and the European Union stressed that the treaty could not address everything, but needed to prioritise key concerns. Meanwhile, the African region said that some of their concerns had been left out, such as the need to reflect that government investment in medical R&D was part of the “global good” – and presumably, this knowledge should be freely available. It also wanted the agreed principle of equity to be “operationalised” and included throughout the document. Dovetailing with IHR reform Most states wanted the process of reforming the IHR and the development of the treaty to dovetail, with China articulating that the IHR reform and development of the treaty needed to be “fully coordinated, consistent and complementary in terms of content”. Stressing that the treaty needed to be formulated with respect for the sovereignty of member states, China also called for “the stigmatization of countries that report cases which helped to motivate countries to share information and pathogen timely way” to be included in the principal part of the document. This was echoed by South Africa, which pointed out how it had been stigmatised and punished with travel bans after it had identified and shared the omicron variant of COVID-19 with the international community. Steven Solomon, WHO principal legal officer Treaty, agreement or convention? In response to member states’ queries about the different legal forms of a pandemic instrument, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that both an agreement and a convention “are both treaties within the meaning of international law”. In addition, said Solomon, a convention and a “framework convention” were “not mutually exclusive” and it is “possible to have a hybrid approach as well as one or the other”. COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. 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COVID-19 Translated into Three Years of ‘Human Rights Violations’ 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention “Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called on parliamentarians to take a “moment of reflection” on the untold human suffering that resulted from the pandemic. “It is not just the millions of lives lost or the trillions of dollars lost,” said Gostin, “but the vast deprivation of freedom, noxious discrimination and erosion of democratic ideals.” Although Monday’s sessions focused specifically on pandemic response and preparedness – human rights will be tackled more thoroughly on Wednesday – Gostin used the summit to speak to participants via Zoom and recount the many human rights violations that ensued over the past three years. He also issued a battle cry for parliamentarians to put practices in place to halt these violations before the next pandemic. He recalled how, in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, there was “less than full transparency” in terms of reporting the outbreak to the word. Even the transfer of the genomic sequence of the virus came “somewhat late.” “There was a crackdown on protesters and particularly a brave, whistle-blower doctor who later died in Wuhan,” he Gostin said. He then fast-forwarded to China’s current zero-COVID strategy, which he said is enforced via extreme surveillance and restriction methods. But the violations did and do not end in the Red Dragon state, said Gostin. Countries cramped down on political protests, delayed elections, enacted abusive restrictions and arrested members of marginalised populations all in the name of COVID, according to Gostin. These violations could be bucketed into two categories, he said – one: violations of political and democratic rights, and two: unequal and discriminatory practices. ‘Vaccine apartheid’ “There was vaccine apartheid, as populations in the United States, Europe and other high-income countries were protected and so many others were left behind, in Africa and other low-income countries,” Gostin noted. Countries from Egypt and Russia, to Venezuela, Madagascar and Bangladesh threatened the civil or political rights of their citizens, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to accurate information from journalists and healthcare workers. Hungary’s prime minister even used emergency powers to direct funding away from cities that were opposition strongholds. Those who were disfavoured in marginalized populations fell victim to arbitrary arrests. For example, Venezuela targeted returning refugees for quarantine in inhumane and degrading facilities, he said. “We all remember the initial scramble for diagnostics tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” Gostin said. “But global outrage should have peaked when the most vulnerable in the world were unable to get vaccines.” In June 2021, according to Gostin, one-third of people in rich countries were fully vaccinated while only 0.2% of people in low-income countries had two shots. The COVAX facility never got the funding it needed to ensure full vaccinations nor could it get the vaccine doses it required. “Today, these inequalities are manifested in antiviral therapeutics like Paxlovid,” Gostin continued. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated into other spheres, with lower standards of living, people being pushed into absolute poverty, inadequate education and nutrition – all exacerbated now because of the Ukraine crisis.” He said the crises caused by COVID-19 and Ukraine merged with climate change, and have left more than 200 million people in acute hunger. “At its core, human rights are about human dignity,” Gostin concluded. “It is now for us to honour … the lives of everyone harmed by these violations by undertaking transformational reforms in global health, human rights security and inequity so that when the next crisis hits, we will at least reassert the fundamental principle of human dignity that emerged after World War II.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman, Screenshot. After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. Our Cookies and Privacy Policy Loading Comments... You must be logged in to post a comment.
After COVID-19, Five Policy Recommendations from Malaysia 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman Malaysian MP Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to enable innovation According to Wuen, countries must enhance platforms and processes so that the public and private sector can innovate in real time. 2 – Establish robust and comprehensive inner-country and global data and knowledge sharing Wuen said that countries should work together to determine and implement best practices. In addition, the world should look toward a global medical network. By agreeing on standards between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies “it doesn’t have to take so much time to approve new drugs, interventions and vaccines. We have to figure out how to be more efficient.” 3 – Invest in global capabilities for the early characterization of pathogens and assessment 4 – Improve and increase education “We need to empower the people by breaking misinformation early,” said Wuen. He recalled that there was a rise in fake news in Malaysia during the pandemic, including around basic principles, like what it means for a vaccine to receive emergency use approval. “We need to educate people so that in the future when vaccines are approved the public has assurance that they are safe to use and that their benefits outweigh their risks,” Wuen stressed. He noted that improving communications should happen immediately if the world wants to be ready for the next crisis. “In a public health crisis, communication is as important – if not more important – than medical intervention,” Wuen said. “To get people to comply, they need to have confidence in the system and to have that trust they need communication.” 5 – A fair, equitable, inclusive and accountable distribution network Wuen said that on the domestic and international levels, systems must be developed to distribute drugs, treatments and vaccines. He said “this includes the controversial topic of an intellectual property (IP) waiver for life-saving vaccines. “It is vaccines in bodies that save lives,” Wuen added. The pandemic reignited a long-standing debate about the right balance between private profits and public health. While some argued that the World Trade Organization rules on IP harmed access to COVID vaccines in poor countries, others said lifting it would remove the incentive for drugmakers to keep developing the life-saving shots. A partial IP waiver on COVID vaccines was agreed on in June and the WTO’s TRIPS’s Council has until 17 December to decide whether to extend it. “The COVID response had its ups and downs, but vaccine inequality is one of our biggest moral failings,” Wuen said. Vaccines in 100 days? CEPI Director of Policy Neren Rau speaking at the UNITE Global Summit on December 5, 2022. Wuen spoke as part of a UNITE Global Summit session titled “Preparing for the pandemic by developing vaccines in 100 days.” The session featured two speakers from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), including Director of Policy Neren Rau. He offered his organization’s plan to ensure there are vaccines for everyone during the next pandemic, which centers on more diversified vaccine manufacturing. CEPI has developed more than 70 partnerships in 50 countries around the world to develop vaccines, enable vaccines and get them into the right people’s hands at a reasonable cost. “Access lies at the heart of our plan,” Rau said. “Achieving the 100-day plan aspiration would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks before they spread and become pandemics.” CEPI’s 100-day plan is to develop a working vaccine within 100 days of the start of the next pandemic. The first vaccines – for typhoid fever and meningitis – took more than 100 years to develop. The vaccine for Ebola took 20 years. It took 364 days to get the first approved COVID-19 vaccine, Rau said, and with the proper efficiencies, the number of days it would take to develop the next vaccine would be only 250. So, why is CEPI so focused on 100 days? “The lives that will be saved,” Rau stressed. “The difference is almost 70 million lives between 364 days and 100 days.” But he added that the plan only works if the vaccine is distributed to the country or region of the outbreak “regardless of where that might be.” He said, “this requires a fundamental shift in international collaboration and cooperation toward a system founded on the principles of equitable access.” The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the world’s last, Wuen added. The next one is “closer than we think.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts This site uses cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Cookies enable us to collect information that helps us personalise your experience and improve the functionality and performance of our site. By continuing to read our website, we assume you agree to this, otherwise you can adjust your browser settings. Please read our cookie and Privacy Policy. Our Cookies and Privacy Policy
MPs Are Urged to Redirect Funding Towards Prevention and Primary Care 05/12/2022 Maayan Hoffman The head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on parliamentarians to redirect health funding towards prevention and primary care to help improve health outcomes. Speaking Monday at the opening session of the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, Francesca Colombo said that a basic health analysis proves the need to be focused in this direction. “Only 3% of total health spending is devoted to tackling poor risk factors and public health measures,” she told a room of more than 30 parliamentarians and other health leaders in the Senate Chamber of the Portuguese Parliament. “Return on investment in tackling unhealthy lifestyles is very high.” She noted for example that every dollar invested in tackling obesity has a $6 return on investment in economic benefits. Moreover, she said that her organization’s work has shown that three out of four deaths from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted by spending just a few dollars more – $2 per person. “While COVID-19 demonstrated that countries with strong health systems and universal health coverage are better prepared to manage health threats, investments in primary care account for less than $1 in every $6 present in health systems,” Colombo stressed. Finally, she added, too much health spending is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. A 2017 OECD report showed 20% of health expenditures make no or minimal contribution to good health outcomes. How to address these failings “The global shortage of healthcare workers must be urgently addressed, including finding equitable solutions to address international health workforce migration,” said Colombo. “The pandemic accelerated the use of digital tools like telehealth and remote diagnostics. Yet more needs to be done to accelerate the equitable development and use of these tools. “Finding new ways to pay for global public goods, such as vaccines and antimicrobials will be essential to be ready for future crises,” she added. The OECD has calculated that even in high-income countries an annual investment totalling 1.4% of GDP is needed to make health systems strong enough to meet the challenges of another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, Colombo said. She expressed concern that finance ministers’ enthusiasm for investing in health is fading away. Raising parliamentarians’ voices Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE Parliamentarians The UNITE Global Summit is meant to once again raise up parliamentarians’ voices around issues of health and health security. The event began around 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber. Although the room is no longer in use, it continues to be harnessed for conferences and its rows of parliamentary chairs lent to the import of the conference on Monday morning. The theme of the UNITE summit is “from pandemic to prosperity,” a topic that Ricardo Baptista Leite, president and founder of UNITE, said should be “self-explanatory.” But, like Colombo, he said that the discussion is coming at a difficult time – a time when governments want to move beyond the pandemic and are focused on other challenging issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation and cost-of-living in their countries. Leite said that nonetheless, parliamentarians must make their voices heard. “We are still in a pandemic, still suffering from the results of severe lockdown and the consequences of our lack of preparedness,” he said. “That is why our first day is focused on infection control and pandemic preparedness and response.” Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva Over the next two days, the conference will also look at the future of health systems and health as a human right. Participants will be charged with answering three questions: What progress have we made so far during the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals period? What have we learned to help us make even more progress by 2030? What is the role of parliamentarians in helping drive that progress? “Parliamentarians should be at the forefront of the fight,” stressed Professor Ilona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, who also spoke as part of the introductory session. “Parliamentarians should be the link between their constituents and their governments.” The UNITE Global Summit runs from Dec. 5-7, 2022. Click here for full coverage. Reporting for this series was supported by UNITE Parliamentarians for Global Health. Image Credits: Maayan Hoffman. Posts navigation Older postsNewer posts