E-DRUG: New health tools for COVID-19
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How to ensure access for all to a coronavirus vaccine should be the
priority for world leaders. Dr Bernard Pecoul offers five ideas leaders
should consider this week as they aim to raise 7.5 billion Euros to fund vaccine
research.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/opinion/new-health-tools-for-covid-19/1462168/
Dr Bernard Pecoul is Executive Director of the Drugs for Neglected
Diseases Initiative
A 'worldwide pledging marathon' hosted by the European Commission and partners has kicked off this week to raise funds for the development of COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. But euros alone won't be enough to put life-saving health technologies into the hands of clinicians and patients.
Through my years as an infectious diseases doctor with Medecins Sans
Frontieres, I know the desperation faced by health workers on the COVID
front-lines when you have no effective drugs or vaccines to offer a
patient. The populations I worked with are far from the spotlight, and
highly neglected. With COVID, the crisis is magnified on a global scale,
impacting all communities and disrupting everyone's lives.
I'm now head of a non-profit that tries to bring an answer to the lack of
medicines for neglected diseases. We drive research, run clinical trials,
partner with ministries of health and pharmaceutical companies, and develop
and deliver new drugs for the most vulnerable. Many of the challenges we
have faced, and that on our modest scale we have overcome
are the very same obstacles governments must tackle now on a global scale.
Angela Merkel has spoken of making any future COVID vaccine a 'global public good'. This is a very noble objective but will remain empty talk unless bold action is taken.
As the multilateral response for COVID research takes shape, here are five
concrete steps that governments need to take to ensure their good
intentions turn into tangible health tools in the hands of clinicians and
patients:
One - don't make funding decisions a closed-door exclusive club. It can't
be up to a small group of countries to find and decide on the tests, drugs
and vaccines that work. We need to identify the tools and interventions
that are the most appropriate and effective in widely different settings
and different countries. Including all countries recognizes the reality
that we need to harness the multiplicity of solutions and contributions.
Researchers and public health leaders from low- and middle-income countries
are both the most legitimate and the most likely to identify what works
best for their populations.
Secondly, commit to open sharing of research knowledge and data. R&D is
often done behind closed doors, whether due to commercial confidentiality
or because companies don't want to disclose negative results. But we know
from experience that open science - publishing results and data in the open, in real-time - improves efficiency and accelerates scientific progress by sharing research knowledge. Funding should be made conditional to results and data,
including genetic data on the virus, promising compounds, clinical trial
protocols and results, being put in the public domain.
Three - make health tools free of intellectual property restrictions. Legal
rights to control knowledge can act as a barrier, both to research itself
and to large-scale production of affordable health technologies. Funding
should require that no new legal rights should be sought, and technology
owners should commit to either not enforce their existing intellectual
property, or to share this knowledge, by licensing it on a non-exclusive
basis globally.
Four - take steps now to ensure sufficient production, equitable
allocation, and affordable pricing. Ensuring enough quality-assured tests,
treatments, vaccines, and other essential equipment are manufactured may be
the greatest challenge of all. Increasing existing production capacity will
not be enough. Additional sources will need to be created, including
through transfer of technology. Once new health tools are developed, they
will need to be equitably allocated both between wealthier and poorer
countries, and within countries. This means the most vulnerable and those
at highest risk must be prioritized. The pricing of these tools must be as
close as possible to what it costs to make them, so that they are
affordable for health systems, and free to those most in need.
And five - require full transparency on R&D funding. The investments of
public money in the discovery and development of health technologies to
address COVID-19 are colossal. Any taxpayer has a right to see a public
return on these public investments in R&D. Transparency will be key to
securing public trust and support and to demonstrate that both governments
and funding recipients are accountable for these investments and how they
are used.
The pledging conference is a promising sign of cooperation and solidarity.
This gives much needed solace, both in the face of the horror of the COVID
crisis, and in light of the threat of profiteering or hoarding.
Just as the COVID crisis is unprecedented in its magnitude, the response
must be unequalled in its ambition. With bold action, the COVID-19 funding
effort launched by the EU could well become a turning point: most urgently,
by developing new health tools for the pandemic; but also in a longer
perspective, to put us on the path toward a more sustainable, effective and
equitable innovation system for all.
Posted by
"Rachel M. Cohen" <rachel.cohen72@gmail.com>