Since assuming its presidency of the Group of 20 major economies last December, one key message highlighted by India is the need to find innovative ways to grow local capabilities to tackle diseases in the global south.
“The COVID-19 pandemic made us realize that many low- and middle-income countries in the global south were left to fend for themselves,” wrote Mansukh Mandaviya, India’s minister of health and family welfare, in February. Rethinking innovative ways to build local-level capabilities for diagnostics, vaccines, and medicines is “what is needed to save lives and economies,” he added.
Not least among the diseases that would benefit from local innovation is tuberculosis, which has seen a big setback during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Madhukar Pai, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and associate director at the McGill International TB Centre.