To end the corona pandemic as quickly as possible, we need to maximize the production of Covid-19 vaccines. The few pharmaceutical companies that currently produce safe and effective vaccines, should share their patent rights and knowledge, so other manufacturers can produce vaccines as well. Governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world: make pooling work!
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Global actors such as the World Bank Group should focus on strengthening public health financing, and refrain from promoting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) with commercial companies in healthcare because of associated risks, such as worsening existing inequalities. This is our request in our co-signed open letter (with nearly 100 signatories) to the World Bank Group, which we sent today and which will be discussed during our joint session with other organisations at the Civil Society Policy Forum of the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings 2021. Our request is based on an analysis of PPPs in healthcare which we describe in our new position paper ‘Risky business’.
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Countries can effectively combat pandemics such as the current Covid-19 pandemic by making long-term investments in structural improvements in global health. This means that governments and their ministries must pursue policy coherence and reinforce each other’s programmes. As the 2021 Dutch general election is approaching, Wemos is advocating – with fellow members of the Dutch Global Health Alliance – a Global Health strategy. Experts, including Wemos director Mariëlle Bemelmans, explain what this would entail in the Election Special of the Dutch development cooperation magazine Vice Versa.
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Country experience shows that Public-Private Partnerships in healthcare (involving commercial actors) bear high costs and can hinder rather than help progress towards universal access to healthcare, and fail to reach the most vulnerable. Yet, global actors are increasingly promoting such partnerships in low- and middle-income countries – a cause of concern for civil society. On February 25th, Wemos and the Kampala Initiative co-hosted the webinar ‘Public-Private Partnerships and commercialisation in healthcare: donors, profit and people’ , during which speakers from civil society discussed their concerns.
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