G20 Health Initiative Proposes Fairer Strategy for Addressing Global Crises

The G20 Health Working Group is moving forward with an alliance for vaccine production. According to the Brazilian embassy, ​​there is consensus among the delegations to create a global alliance for the production of medicines, vaccines and supplies. The terms of the proposal, led by Brazil, are still under negotiation, but have broad support from the delegations. If approved, it will need to be referenced at a ministerial meeting close to the meeting, which will take place in October.

To comment on the proposal, the interviewee is Gonzalo Vecina Neto, professor of the Department of Politics, Management and Health of the School of Public Health at USP, who was also the CEO of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency). He summarizes the issue: “Multilateral organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), will respond to guarantee access to materials, medicines and especially vaccines to face [health] emergencies.”

The project

Given that the pandemic took the world by surprise in a short space of time, Vecina Neto says that industries and countries “were able to respond quite quickly, with just one small problem: most of these doses ended up in Europe and the United States, in developed countries.” All of the initial doses went to rich countries, which bought much more than they actually needed; emerging and underdeveloped countries had to wait for leftovers.

The proposal, led by Brazil, is for a global organization to regulate and deal with crises. The professor also emphasizes that it is very likely that new epidemics will emerge, in addition to COVID-19, and that it is just a matter of time. With this in mind, there must be a mechanism that values ​​fair and logical distribution from the point of view of health efficiency.

In short, the project is to “create a coalition of countries and institutions that are prepared to provide responses that are responses for the entire world population and not just for the population of their respective countries,” explains the expert. Especially in the initial phases, when the inputs are still being discovered and produced, “if we have a quantity of vaccines that is not sufficient to meet everyone’s needs, yes, a criterion will have to be used to distribute the vaccines,” he adds. The point is that distribution should not simply be based on whoever can pay the most.

Distribution criteria

Vecina Neto comments that Brazil, for example, decided to prioritize the elderly and those with comorbidities because they are more likely to die if they contract the disease. But this measure is not necessarily the right one. He gives another example: “Indonesia decided to prioritize vaccinating the most vulnerable, those who could not protect themselves from the disease, those who have to go out to eat every day.” This same measure, in Brazil, would change the priority groups to “black, poor people, who were necessarily exposed to the virus because they had to eat.”

Today, it is still difficult to say with certainty what was right and what was wrong. But finding a solution that is fairer and better serves the world as a whole would be the key point of this new discussion. This global alliance “would collect the products that were produced [vaccines, medicines, etc.] and that could be distributed with humanitarian concepts and taking into account the needs of different populations,” says the doctor.

Finally, Vecina Neto makes a point of emphasizing Brazil’s importance in this scenario. With one of the largest public health systems in the world and a long tradition of mass vaccination, the country can occupy a prominent place. To this end, he reinforces the importance of encouraging national research and industry, as was the case with the Butantã Institute during the pandemic. Of the 735 million doses of COVID administered in Brazil, almost half were produced in the country itself.