WHO Creates Platform to Share Scientific Discoveries to Fight COVID-19
By: The Un Brief
Tags: Technology, Tech, World Health Organization, UN, Open Source

Leaders from academia, private sector, and civil society participated in a moderated discussion, including Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College of London (UCL), and Founder and Director of UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and Columbia University’s Joseph Stieglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics (2001), and Nobel Peace Prize (2007, shared), who reiterated the need of a concerted effort that would allow researchers to share knowledge in an open source platform, with the results being a public health good, available to all and subsidized for those who cannot afford it.

The speakers echoed President Alvarado of Costa Rica, who believes that the resulting “Vaccines, tests, diagnostics, treatments and other key tools in the coronavirus response must be made universally available as global public goods.”

The COVID-19 Technology Access Pool “will be a one-stop shop for scientific knowledge, data and intellectual property, and must to be shared equitably by the global community, to accelerate the discovery of vaccines through open-science research, and to fast-track product development by mobilizing additional manufacturing capacity,” according to the WHO.

“This will help ensure faster and more equitable access to existing and new COVID-19 health products.”

With more than one hundred vaccines currently being developed around the globe, the idea of creating a platform to pool knowledge among researchers is certainly welcome by low and middle-income countries, as some lack the laboratories and expertise necessaries to fast-track the development of medicines.

Participant institutions agreed on shared licensing modalities that prioritize the public good availability, meaning that the resulting medicines and any potential treatment, diagnostic, vaccine or other health technology be deposited in the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health body that promotes the development of life-critical medicines for low and middle-income countries.

C-TAP is a sister initiative to the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, also led by WHO, and other initiatives to fight COVID-19 worldwide.

To date, the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool has the support of the governments of Argentina, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Mozambique, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Sudan, The Netherlands, Timor-Leste, Uruguay.

WHO and Costa Rica co-hosted the event, which began with a high-level session addressed by the WHO Director-General and President Alvarado in addition to Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados, and Aksel Jacobsen, State Secretary, Norway, and video statements by President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador; President Thomas Esang Remengesau Jr., of Palau; Michelle Bachelet, UN Human Rights High Commissioner; Jagan Chapagain, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC); and Retno Marsudi, Minister for Foreign Affairs for Indonesia.

The initiative is part of the WHO Solidarity Call to Action, and supports Global Sustainable Development Goal 3, as well as the WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPA- PHI), the WHO Roadmap for access to medicines, vaccines and health products 2019–2023, and the UN General Assembly Resolution on “International cooperation to ensure global access to medicines, vaccines and medical equipment to face COVID-19” (A/RES/74/274); and last, but not least, the 73rd World Health Assembly Resolution on the “COVID-19 response” (WHA73.1).