The multiple overlapping discussions underway on medical countermeasures (MCMs) — vaccines, medicines, tests, and other health technologies to prevent, detect, and control disease outbreaks — must do more than tinker in the margins of the status quo. Learning hard lessons from previous experiences that failed to achieve timely and equitable access to such health technologies in large parts of the world, we must raise the ambition and design a truly transformative MCMs platform for research and development, manufacturing, and access centered on equity from start to finish.
Timely and equitable access to effective MCMs that are suited to the realities of the local health context is critical to stop outbreaks when and where they occur. It is the only way to avoid larger epidemics, or another pandemic, that uproot people’s lives and livelihoods, as happened during COVID-19.
Already in its first 2021 report, the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response highlighted the need for an end-to-end approach to medical R&D of effective health technologies, based on common good principles and with equity built in throughout the development pipeline.
About the authors
Els Torreele
Els Torreele is a global health and innovation expert, focusing on transforming medical R&D to address priority health needs and ensure equitable access. She worked with MSF, DNDi, and Open Society Foundations, and is now an independent consultant and visiting policy fellow at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
Dr. Joanne Liu
Dr. Joanne Liu is a Canadian practicing pediatric emergency physician and professor at McGill University’s School of Population & Global Health where she focuses on pandemic and health emergencies. Prior to joining McGill, she was the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières for over six years from 2013 to 2019.
Michel Kazatchkine
Michel Kazatchkine is an academic physician. He’s the former head of France’s National Agency for AIDS Research and health ambassador. He led The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as executive director from 2007 to 2012. He is a former member of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
