New Tech Platform to Provide Equitable Access to Covid-19 Health Products
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Photo: WHO
Presidents Carlos Alvarado Quesada of Costa Rica and Sebastián Piñera of Chile have planned to work with WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to build a new technology platform.
It aims to lift access barriers to effective vaccines, medicines, and other health products against Covid-19. Costa Rica proposed the idea at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak and several countries are now backing the proposal.
“We need to unleash the full power of science, without caveats or restrictions, to deliver innovations that are scalable, usable, and benefit everyone, everywhere, at the same time,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe. Solidarity within and between countries and the private sector is essential if we are to overcome these difficult times,” he added.
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The platform will pool data, knowledge, and intellectual property for existing or new Covid-19 health products to deliver ‘global public goods’ for all people and all countries. Through the open sharing of science and data, numerous companies will be able to access the information they need to produce the technologies, thereby scaling up availability worldwide, lowering costs and increasing access.
WHO and Costa Rica will officially launch the platform on 29 May. On that date, a Solidarity Call to Action will be published on WHO’s website where governments, research and development funders, institutions and companies can express their support.
The solidarity of all of WHO’s Member States will be critical to ensuring the technology platform can be a meaningful tool for equitable access to Covid-19 health products.
