Presented by Forecasting Healthy Futures
In its quest to improve the quality and quantity of its funding, who is the World Health Organization going to call? GHOSTBUS — wait, no, sorry, scratch that. Increasingly, it’s the WHO Foundation, which is working to bring the agency private sector funding.
Launched in 2020, the independent Swiss foundation has channeled $24 million to the agency. That’s only a small percentage of WHO’s overall proposed budget, which stands at $6.83 billion this year and next. Still, the foundation is forward-looking, busily scouting out prospective donors to understand where their interests might align with WHO’s ongoing work.
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Anil Soni, the chief executive officer at the foundation, tells my colleague Sara Jerving that his goal is to engage in more “big bet philanthropy” and impact investing in the coming years, bringing more partners on board to tackle global challenges.
WHO has long struggled to secure flexible funding for its operations, which limits the agency’s ability to allocate resources to the most pressing global health priorities. While the private sector isn’t known for bringing in fully flexible funds — that’s the role country membership dues play — the WHO Foundation can work with philanthropic organizations, companies, and corporate foundations that might still want some control over where their money goes but are willing to align their giving with WHO’s activities.
The foundation also takes over the often time-consuming role of writing reports and maintaining donor relationships, freeing up WHO’s staff time to get back to the business of responding to global health needs. The agency must write more than 3,000 reports to donors each year.
Read: The foundation bringing in private sector finance to WHO (Pro)
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The future of pharmaceutical manufacturing in low- and middle-income countries appears to be regional. Rather than competing with their neighbors to produce vaccines or treatments, countries can work together with some locations taking on the task of actually producing vaccines, for instance, while others supply filters or vials.
Easier said than done, though, which is why the World Economic Forum formed the Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative in 2022. And now CEPI is taking a stronger role in the effort, which engages public and private partners predominantly across Africa and Latin America. A small, new CEPI-hosted secretariat will consist of up to eight people, with plans to operate for at least three years.
The plan is to help support existing regional vaccine manufacturing initiatives, Sara explains, while also working to connect regions so they can share lessons and technical knowledge. Each region has something to offer: Latin America has the more established manufacturers, for instance, while Africa has a more clearly defined road map for regionalizing pharmaceutical production.
The secretariat will also work to encourage political and financial commitments, while helping to supply data and offer advice on how to build sustainable business models and markets.
Meanwhile, another strategy for increasing local production of vaccines is drawing some scrutiny. To improve access to modular messenger RNA vaccines in East Africa, the biotechnology company BioNTech is setting up modular factories in shipping containers called BioNTainers. The first facility opened in Kigali, Rwanda, in December.
A new case study from four public health NGOs in Africa and Europe has concluded that the BioNTainer might increase production and improve regulatory systems in Rwanda. However, the investigators raised questions about the absence of policies and strategies “to ensure that the region can fully develop, produce and market mRNA vaccines and other health products for and by themselves in the future.”
Read: Inside CEPI’s efforts to bridge regional vaccine manufacturing efforts (Pro)
Background reading: BioNTech unveils its first mRNA manufacturing facility in Africa
Lower-income countries that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, supports can now apply to introduce four vaccines, namely preventive Ebola vaccine, human rabies vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis, multivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine, and hepatitis B birth dose vaccine.
The multilateral funder announced on Thursday that it is now supporting the introduction of these lifesaving doses after putting them on hold due to COVID-19, lack of a suitable product, or lack of policy recommendations.
Support for the introduction of preventive Ebola vaccines outside of an outbreak response could be a game changer, my colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo tells me, especially in high-risk areas. Ebola is rare but deadly, with case fatality rates from past outbreaks ranging from 25% to 90%.
The support comes after the WHO decision last month to recommend preventive Ebola vaccination for high-risk groups such as health care workers and front-line workers in countries with a history of outbreaks.
They’ll have to follow the money, though — continuation of all Gavi-supported programs after 2025 is contingent on a successful fundraising for its next strategic period.
181 million
—That’s the number of children under age 5 globally who are severely deprived of nutritious diets, according to UNICEF, about 27% of the world’s youth. That means, at most, those children are only consuming two food groups — usually milk along with starchy food such as rice, wheat, or maize.
It’s a diet short of essential nutrients and one that can lead to malnutrition and underdevelopment. In severe cases, it can result in a life-threatening form of malnutrition, wasting, or cause lifelong consequences, such as stunting.
UNICEF points to three main reasons for the disturbing number of children who can’t access healthy diets: shortfalls in household income, a lack of information about healthy food choices, and an overabundance of cheap, ultraprocessed foods that do not contain the needed nutrients.
Conflict, including the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, also threatens to add to the alarming total, with 9 in 10 children there existing in severe food poverty.
Read: 1 in 4 young children deprived of nutritious food, UNICEF says
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The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has some questions about how the U.S. Agency for International Development will use unprecedented investments in the global health supply chain to bolster local partners.
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The agency is in the midst of awarding contracts for the NextGen Global Health Supply Chain, a suite of major contracts that add up to about $17 billion in funding. And U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, sent a letter to USAID Administrator Samantha Power last month noting that there are “few sectors as primed for local actors to take the lead as in healthcare and logistics.”
His letter follows promises by USAID to spend more money at the local level in countries where it works. The problem, my colleague Michael Igoe explains, is that the agency has been slow to deliver on that localization pledge.
In his letter, Cardin explicitly asks how much of the NextGen funds will go directly to local and private sector organizations. USAID has not offered an answer — at least not publicly. But we’ll be keeping an eye on what impact, if any, his nudge has.
Read: US lawmaker presses USAID chief on health supply chain localization
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Speaking of USAID, the agency committed around $6.8 billion through contracts during the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. That money went to more than 1,900 organizations, according to some number crunching by my colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan.
However, the top 10 suppliers received more than 40% of that total, or about $3 billion. So who reaped the biggest rewards? The names are likely to be familiar:
1. Chemonics — $1.38 billion.
2. DAI Global — $489.2 million.
3. Abt Global — $229.5 million.
Devex Pro members will have access to the full list, including an in-depth analysis of the top 10 contractors.
Read: Who were USAID’s top contractors in 2023? (Pro)
With Israeli forces pulling out of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, Palestinian search teams are uncovering mass graves and questioning Israel’s claims that no civilians were killed during its raids on the complex. [BBC]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved an experimental Alzheimer’s treatment, despite significant safety risks. [The New York Times]
A new study finds that ultraprocessed plant-based foods can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death. [CNN]