Innovation and inequities in the COVID-19 response.
Inequities in access to health tools came into even sharper focus this year.
Over 8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but by the end of November, only 1 in 4 African health workers were fully vaccinated. A mere 0.4% of tests globally have been carried out in low-income countries.
Driving efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has led the charge for equity. We have set global vaccination targets and emphasized that the priority in every country, and globally, should be protecting those most at-risk, such as health workers and older people. As of 20 December 2021, we have validated 10 COVID-19 vaccines as safe, effective and high-quality and continually updated our therapeutics guidelines, reflecting the very latest clinical insights.
Collaboration is key to WHO’s COVID-19 response. The world’s best scientific brains came together to ask and answer the critical research questions needed to tackle COVID-19 under WHO’s Research and Development Blueprint. The ACT-Accelerator halved the cost of COVID-19 rapid tests for low and lower-middle income countries and procured over 148 million tests. Its vaccines arm, COV AX, delivered over three quarters of a billion doses globally, despite substantial challenges, such as vaccine hoarding and insufficient transparency from manufacturers. Throughout this uncertain year, we partnered closely with countries on preparing for rollouts.
WHO also launched an mRNA technology transfer hub initiative and is supporting a South African manufacturer in bringing the know how, data and technology together to develop production capacity to serve the region.
Providing a great example of a transparent, global, non-exclusive agreement, the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool announced its first license, which will allow all countries to manufacture a serological test developed by the Spanish National Research Council.
As our COVID-19 response continues apace, so do our preparedness efforts for future outbreaks. With Germany, we opened a Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin. With Switzerland, we launched the first facility in our global GitHub system for rapidly and safely sharing pathogens, which will help assess risks and enhance global preparedness.
Globally, there have been over 100 Interaction Reviews by countries, who have used this tool to evaluate their COVID-19 responses and strengthen them in real time. In parallel, the pilot rollout of Universal Health and Preparedness Reviews has successfully recruited countries to learn from each other in assessing their readiness for the next pandemic while providing for and promoting the overall health of their populations.
Emergencies emerge and persist.
As the pandemic raged on, WHO and partners continued helping communities caught up in protracted humanitarian crises, such as those in Yemen and Syria, while responding to emerging ones in Afghanistan and Northern Ethiopia.
In Yemen, COVID-19 has further strained a health system already beset by conflict and other disease outbreaks, where only half of the country’s healthcare facilities are reported as functional. WHO has helped millions by supporting essential health services and therapeutic feeding center to treat children with acute malnutrition. In response to the pandemic, WHO worked on the construction of oxygen production stations, capacity-building for health care workers, provision of medical and protective equipment and bolstering laboratory and testing capacity.
After more than a decade of crisis, needs in Syria are greater than ever. WHO stepped up with deliveries of medical supplies and by working with partners to provide mental health support.
Currently, the world’s largest humanitarian emergency, Afghanistan is contending not only with COVID-19 but also acute watery diarrhea, dengue, measles, polio and malaria. WHO has shipped over 414 metric tonnes of life-saving medical supplies since 15 August 2021, and, with partners, vaccinated 8.5 million children against polio through a November campaign.
Severe hardships — including a lack of fuel, food and medicine — also afflicted people in Northern Ethiopia. WHO provided over 367 metric tonnes of humanitarian cargo to Ethiopia to date, to provide relief to hundreds of thousands of families. Together with partners, we also launched a campaign to vaccinate 2 million people against cholera in Ti gray region. We also supported mobile health and nutrition teams to deliver services to internally displaced people in conflict-affected Afar, Adhara and Ti gray regions.
Tackling health service challenges.
Once-in-a-generation crises have outsized ripple effects. The pandemic is likely to halt two decades of global progress towards universal health coverage (UHC), having triggered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and badly disrupted health services.
According to new data launched this year, 23 million children missed out on routine vaccines in 2020, the largest number in over a decade – increasing risks from preventable diseases like measles and polio. Over half of the countries WHO surveyed between June and October 2021 reported disruptions to services for diabetes, cancer screening and treatment, and hypertension management.
As we navigate these challenges, UHC remains WHO are North Star. Yet even before COVID-19, the world was falling short of our target to see 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC, as half a billion people were pushed (or pushed still further) into extreme poverty because of payments they had to make for health care. The situation will only be worse as a result of the pandemic, so we must redouble our efforts and make ‘Health For All’ the rallying cry of the recovery.
COVID-19 has exposed the limits of the resilience of health systems, underscoring the need to build them up to better deliver on both universal health coverage and health security. All countries should invest in primary health care, the health and care workforce, health infrastructure, medicines and other health products, and strengthening social protection mechanisms.
For its part, WHO is bolstering health services at this pivotal moment, for example, through our collaboration with partners on achieving the Immunization Agenda 2030 strategy. We are also facilitating big picture thinking on the way forward, by convening experts to look at how to fund health for all and ensure that medical breakthroughs serve the common good. Shortly after UHC Day, we marked the agreement of the Geneva Charter for Well-being, which signals the need for a paradigm shift towards prevention and equipping people to take control of their own health.
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