IFPMA welcomes the opportunity to comment on the WHO AFRO region’s strategy for health security and emergencies. The innovative biopharmaceutical industry is keen to learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and to work with others to ensure we are much better prepared for the next health emergency.
We are not surprised by the assessment from the background document, stating that there have been major gaps in access to services and resilience, both of which have significant impacts on health security. We support calls to enable quicker detection of high-threat pathogens, which require immediate, safe, transparent, and rapid sharing of samples and genetic sequence data.
This, together with an enabling innovation ecosystem and regulatory agility, are among the biopharmaceutical industry’s 10 lessons learned in the process of successfully developing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Our most important lesson learned is that we must redouble collective efforts to achieve health equity, while ensuring health systems and delivery infrastructure are strengthened. This analysis has resulted in industry tabling the Berlin Declaration, which proposes to create a collaborative solution for more equitable rollout of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics for future pandemics.
National and regional governments have the power and responsibility to determine their health security, and, in this spirit, we urge the AFRO Member States to continue to show their political leadership and follow through on the African Union commitments to increase domestic health financing.
