Access To Covid Technologies
Many of the challenges of access to technologies came to a head during the Covid 19 pandemic. These included.
- Ensuring that the intellectual property regime and trade laws are aligned to public health goals and the above priorities.
- Reduce corporate monopoly in innovation, manufacture and supply chain management of essential technologies.
- Ensuring that LMIC regions and India in particular have a policy for access to technologies that is consistent with its health policy objectives and which ensures self-reliance, health security and health sovereignty.
- Ensuring geographically distributed manufacturing capacity internationally and within nation with a sub-theme dealing with public sector production.
- Effective regulation- certification, quality, clinical trials.
We begin by sharing a WHO document- ACT now, ACT together: 2020-2021 Impact Report on the WHO Response to ensuring access to technologies.
We then share another document- on C-TAP or COVID 19 Technologies Access Pool, which was a proposed approach to enhancing global manufacturing capacities to face pandemics.
We then share three policy briefs prepared by the Peoples Health Movement on its cautions regarding these developments and the alternatives it proposes. These are :
We then provide a detailed comprehensive article that discusses all the challenges and problems of the approach taken by global institutions for providing access to covid technologies. This was written by David Legge and Sun Kim : Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines: Cooperation around Research and Production Capacity Is Critical.”
We then share three media stories on the problems of access to covid vaccine in India. The first of these “COVID Vaccines- Challenge and Opportunity” was published in Frontline in January 2021. and the other two were Times of India interviews on universal Covid vaccination in India, given in March and May 2021 on issues related to universal covid vaccination in India . These discuss not only the problems of manufacture but also health services related problems.
We then include three reports which were part of a major intervention carried out by civil society globally to address these issues. The Project Report “Promoting Equitable Access to Essential Health technologies in the context of the Covid 19 Pandemic” documents a unique effort (2.10). The report includes a list of number of publications from activists for health equity. As part of this work there was also a country specific “ Situation Analysis Report from South Africa on the way the crisis in access was playing out there and this report is shared.
Health Services Related: Ensuring right-based access requires
- Availability of essential drugs and other technologies free of cost at all public and publicly administered care facilities
- Procurement and quality assurance of all products in use.
- Price controls
- Prevention/reduction of irrational and hazardous use of technologies. Including ensuring rational and ethical marketing of technologies including comprehensive generic medicines policy covering labelling, prescription.
- Prevention of anti-microbial resistance
We have just introduced one paper drawing lessons from Tamil Nadu during the Covid-19 pandemic in this collection so far. But more will follow.