At this year’s World Health Assembly in May, delegates passed a resolution that could be the first step in dramatically scaling up access to the tests and equipment needed to accurately determine what is making people sick — particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Experts hope the resolution will jump-start national efforts to identify the gaps in diagnostic coverage, to harmonize regional regulations of the tests and to compel manufacturers to reduce prices so countries can actually make them available.
The vote late last month was “a very important step toward implementation,” Stijn Deborggraeve, the diagnostics adviser for infectious diseases at Médecins Sans Frontières’ Access Campaign, told Devex. “It’s a political commitment from the member states to improve diagnostics capacity and access to diagnostics.”
Now experts are watching if the commitment at the WHA will translate into the support — both political and financial — needed to improve the vast global gaps in access to diagnostics.