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Unicef to ensure that all countries receive COVID-19 vaccines
MANILA, Philippines – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will lead the procurement and supply of 2019 coronavirus disease vaccines to ensure all countries have access to initial doses when available, the agency announced.
The vaccine procurement and distribution effort, which involves more than 170 economies, has the potential to become the world’s largest and fastest vaccine procurement and supply, as part of the Global Access Center’s global vaccine plan. COVID-19 Vaccines (COVAX Center) run by Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
“This is a hands-on partnership between governments, manufacturers and multilateral partners to continue the high-risk fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, over the weekend.
“In our collective search for a vaccine, UNICEF is leveraging its unique strengths in vaccine provision to ensure that all countries have safe, prompt and equitable access to initial doses when available.”
UNICEF is the world’s largest vaccine buyer, purchasing more than two billion doses of various vaccines annually for routine immunization and outbreak response on behalf of nearly 100 countries.
In collaboration with the Revolving Fund of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), UNICEF will lead efforts to acquire and supply doses of COVID-19 vaccines on behalf of the COVAX World Vaccine Center for 92 low- and lower-middle-income countries whose vaccine purchases will be supported by the mechanism.
UNICEF will also serve as the procurement coordinator to support purchases from 80 higher-income economies, which have expressed their intention to participate in the COVAX Fund and would finance the vaccines from their own budgets.
These UNICEF efforts will be carried out in close collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, Vaccine Alliance, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), PAHO, World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other partners. .
The COVAX facility is open to all countries to ensure that no country is left without access to a future coronavirus vaccine.
About 28 manufacturers have shared their annual production plans for COVID-19 vaccines through 2023 with UNICEF, which in a market assessment said drug manufacturers are willing to collectively produce “unprecedented amounts” of vaccines in the next one or two. years.
However, manufacturers noted that investments to support large-scale dose production would largely depend on, among other things, whether clinical trials are successful, advance purchase agreements are established, funding is confirmed, and procedures are simplified. regulatory and registration channels. .
Meanwhile, Science and Technology Secretary Fortunato dela Peña said that the web-based disease surveillance tool that his department provided to the Department of Health (DOH) can be used for upcoming clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine that They will be held in the country in the fourth quarter of the year.
Dela Peña said that the characteristics and capabilities of the Syndromic Surveillance Feasibility Analysis using the Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler for the Early Detection of Diseases (FASSSTER), such as its ability to identify hot spots of COVID cases in a certain locality, makes it useful for clinical trials of the vaccine, especially in selecting the best areas to get volunteer participants.
“Because to measure the effectiveness of the vaccine, you have to do your inoculation in areas with a high number of COVID-19 cases or areas with hot spots,” Dela Peña told The STAR.
Tracking participants, he said, will be easier with the FASSSTER system.
The DOST-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and the Ateneo Center for Computing Competency and Research (ACCCRe) formally delivered the FASSSTER surveillance tool to DOH last Friday to use in its battle to contain the pandemic.
Dr Lilibeth David, Undersecretary of Health for Health Facility and Infrastructure Development, said the FASSSTER tool, in its pilot use, had proven effective in helping the Department of Health implement five main strategies to contain and eventually eradicate COVID-19: prevent, detect, isolate, treat and recover. – Rainier Allan Ronda
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