News: Announcement

The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) welcomes the historic consensus on the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement—a first-of-its-kind instrument that, if implemented, could help reshape the global innovation ecosystem for pandemic preparedness and ensure greater equity in the development of and access to new pandemic tools. While the agreement reflects compromise and not all ambitions were met, it represents important progress and lays the groundwork for action toward global readiness and equity in future health emergencies. “There is a clear and welcome throughline in this agreement that the fruits of research and development, particularly that which is publicly funded, should and must benefit all the world’s citizens, including those in low- and middle-income countries who are far too often left behind,” said Dr. Kristie Mikus, Executive Director of GHTC. “Today, the world is sending a forceful message that we cannot and will not repeat the devastating inequities seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.”Notably, this agreement commits countries to develop policies attaching public interest conditions to public research and development (R&D) funding—an unprecedented move with the potential to transform how treatments, tests, and vaccines are developed and delivered during health crises. It also establishes a new global coordination mechanism on supply chain and logistics, requires national policies that promote post-clinical trial access to products for trial populations and at-risk groups, and outlines principles for a new Pathogen Access and Benefits Sharing (PABS) system, which would grant 20 percent of medical countermeasures produced by participating manufacturers to WHO, enabling more equitable access and distribution worldwide.It is also the first global health agreement grounded in One Health that explicitly acknowledges the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health. These are historic achievements and steps in the right direction to ensure the world is better prepared to respond to future threats.“Today’s adoption is a big win for the world and for multilateralism, but the test now lies in whether countries can seal the deal with PABS and translate these promises into ratification and effective policies at the national level to drive sustained impact,” said Philip Kenol, Senior Multilateral Policy and Advocacy Officer at GHTC.GHTC calls on member states to work diligently to ensure forthcoming negotiations to finalize the PABS system bring all relevant stakeholders to the table and achieve an agreement that drives innovation and delivers equitable access for all who need it, especially underserved populations. Countries must maintain the momentum to ensure that universal ratification of these important obligations and principles catalyzes a stronger and more effective pandemic preparedness architecture that benefits everyone, everywhere.

South Africa’s presidency will be the first time an African country presides over the G20, representing a massive opportunity to shine a light on the needs and capacities of the region, and we welcome their government's focus on science-based innovation. The world remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to emerging diseases and global health threats, and G20 leaders must take action and seize opportunities to ensure every country and community has the tools they need to address poverty-related and neglected diseases as part of universal health coverage and create a pandemic-ready future. This means investing in both new and existing mechanisms that facilitate the development of new health technologies and strengthen the research and development (R&D) ecosystem globally to create a more fit-for-purpose global health architecture.GHTC is calling upon G20 nations to support the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation, and Equitable Access; robustly fund R&D partnerships for pandemic preparedness; establish a global medical countermeasures platform; support investments to strengthen local R&D capacity globally; advance R&D for key priorities like antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and climate resiliency; and improve access to new technologies through regulatory strengthening, specifically prioritizing the R&D needs of underserved populations.1. Pandemic prevention, preparedness, and responseIt is clear that building up robust research and manufacturing capacities in regional science ecosystems is critical to ensuring access to quality and affordable health technologies for the most vulnerable populations, including women and children. Yet the challenge lies in catalyzing more geographically diversified local production of novel health products and building sustainable manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Cross collaboration is also essential, as these capabilities are not just necessary for strengthening pandemic preparedness and response, but also for combatting endemic diseases. GHTC calls on the G20 to consider the following recommendations:  Support the implementation and pilot testing of the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation, and Equitable Access.Ensure civil society and community voices have a seat at the table, including in the decision-making structures of the coalition.Highlight the need to focus on local and regional R&D to fill the gap in health tools for the world’s most neglected communities, including tools addressing historically neglected diseases, such as leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and dengue, as well as higher-burden, poverty-related diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.Boost upstream R&D through the coalition, harnessing and strengthening R&D capacities across G20 countries through both South-South and triangular partnerships. This could include supporting open drug discovery networks, undertaking preclinical and clinical evaluation of prioritized compounds, and initiating clinical trials.Foster regulatory cooperation by collaborating with stakeholders such as the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, the African Union, the European Union, and others, to share expertise and conduct joint reviews in order to overcome regulatory bottlenecks and facilitate rapid access to products.Strengthen local capacity and ownership through support for R&D hubs that span the product development value chain, from discovery to productive development to distributed manufacturing to clinical trial infrastructure in LMICs. Support regionally led plans for innovation and manufacturing of economically viable vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics.Couple manufacturing investments with commitments by private-sector companies and governments to step up support for technology transfer, technical assistance to local manufacturers for quality systems, regulatory authorization, market entry, and workforce development so that new manufacturing hubs have the equipment, expertise, know-how, and power to produce and deliver new quality-assured innovations safely and rapidly at scale.Support preferential procurement policies for regionally manufactured products from global procurers such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; UNICEF; and Unitaid. Commit to developing globally accessible online prototype libraries of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for priority viral and bacterial families and for Disease X, in coordination with the World Health Organization’s updated priority viral family list.Accelerate clinical trials aiming to determine product safety and effectiveness and systematically include community engagement plans in clinical study protocols. Establish reference standards for diagnostics early in disease outbreaks and clinical trials.Fully and sustainably finance public-private R&D and access partnerships for strategic health products that will be crucial during a future health emergency or pandemic, including committing $80 million to FIND’s 100 Days Mission framework for diagnostics and $1.5 billion to fulfill the remaining financing needs for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’s 100 Days Mission strategy for vaccines, as well as supporting Unitaid and others for therapeutics including oxygen therapy.Establish and adopt an end-to-end medical countermeasures platform guided by human rights principles, focusing on the needs of all, particularly those in LMICs, through sustainable financing, addressing R&D needs, and implementing mechanisms for equitable access.Support the coordination of vaccine manufacturing networks to service clinical trials and routine supplies in inter-pandemic and pandemic periods.Facilitate agreement between key stakeholders, countries and funders on how sustainable stockpiles of experimental vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics can be created to enable a rapid response to new outbreaks.2. Science and innovation for health and economic growthSouth Africa’s leadership in health research and commitment to science within its G20 health agenda reflects the important role that innovation plays in improving health outcomes and driving economic growth. A resilient product development value chain further fosters innovation of lifesaving products and elevates community expertise. To build on collaboration across G20 health priorities, it is critical to implement an end-to-end research pipeline that carries lessons learned throughout, from clinical trials to manufacturing and surveillance. Furthermore, the evolving threat of AMR underscores the need for crosscutting and sustainable innovation, touching on issues of pandemic preparedness, climate resilience, adaptability, and more. AMR is anticipated to cause 10 million deaths by 2050, with the highest burden in the Global South. While it was promising to see AMR commitments made last year on the global stage, it is imperative that South Africa carries this work forward as G20 lead this year. GHTC calls on G20 countries to consider the following recommendations:  Support cross-collaborative approaches for innovation—globally and across G20 health pillars—that foster localized capacity-building and equitable access to products that ensure the specific R&D needs of women, children, and other vulnerable populations are addressed.  Establish a comprehensive end-to-end product development pipeline that optimizes global health R&D outputs and maximizes return on investment across G20 priorities. G20 countries should ensure greater cross-sector collaboration—including the pandemic preparedness and science for health pillars—to advance the R&D ecosystem.Engage with local experts, such as primary health care providers, community members, and civil society, to identify specific health technology gaps for underserved populations and take actionable steps to close them, including specifying target product profiles and investing in therapeutics and diagnostic tools for children and pregnant women.  Leverage existing political frameworks dedicated to global health R&D, such as the African Union-European Union Innovation Agenda, to develop joint research and innovation agendas to improve the availability and affordability of emerging technologies. Support product development partnerships, which have been a key instrument in the fight against poverty-related and neglected diseases and make further investments in this essential component of the global health architecture. This is particularly critical to ensure that products are developed and distributed with the end user in mind and with characteristics, including affordability, acceptability, and ease of administration, that facilitate their uptake and delivery.  Prioritize addressing AMR by investing in the development of novel products and engaging in key partnerships with civil society and multilateral bodies to build on progress made in the fight against AMR.Invest in R&D to develop new antimicrobials and ensure investments align with global and regional push/pull incentives that harness the financial force and prowess of the private sector to bring novel antimicrobial products to market.  Contribute to existing global AMR players, such as the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, or CARB-X, and the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, or GARDP.  Provide ongoing support to the Global AMR R&D Hub in its work providing countries and investors with the latest AMR R&D landscape information, helping to address market gaps. The Hub should also pave the way for efficient deployment of tailor-made incentives for R&D and facilitate global discussions on priorities and opportunities for increasing investments in R&D. With so many tectonic shifts for global health in 2025, GHTC urges G20 members to work with civil society to push for the successful implementation of these key principles, pledges, and initiatives and build a global health architecture with all relevant stakeholders that increases the development of and access to health technologies.

GHTC's statement on Agenda item 22: Climate and Health at the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Executive Board (EB) meeting.Climate change undermines global health security, and we applaud WHO’s resolution and new Global Action Plan on Climate and Health to address these risks. WHO’s drafted plan accounts for the important role that research will play in addressing climate change, including through regional research capacity-building. We especially applaud the document’s call for member states to promote research and development (R&D) to prevent, detect, treat, and respond to climate-sensitive diseases and health outcomes.  However, while the draft includes several strong R&D provisions, it mentions the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) only once. AMR is poised to cause 10 million annual deaths by 2050, and likely more with the growing influence of rising temperatures and evolving zoonotic diseases. Highlighting AMR as a global health threat inextricably linked to climate change and developing actionable guidance will be crucial for holistic and successful global action. With this in mind, we strongly suggest WHO and member states take the following actions: 1. WHO and member states should align the global action plan with last year's World Health Assembly resolution to accelerate global efforts to address antimicrobial resistance. In particular, we urge both WHO and member states to establish a global AMR laboratory network to strengthen worldwide AMR diagnostic capacity. 2. We urge WHO to work jointly with member states to strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change through increased investments to develop new treatments that keep pace with resistance. We encourage member state investment in R&D to pioneer innovative health technologies, including prioritizing the expansion of access to health tools for those in vulnerable geographies and for the populations most impacted by AMR. 3. We encourage countries to accelerate the development and implementation of national action plans for AMR surveillance and response in addition to prioritizing a comprehensive One Health approach that appraises the needs of those most burdened by AMR. We call on WHO to continue supporting the development, revision, and implementation of AMR national action plans on a routine basis and facilitating regional- and cross-country-level collaboration and integration of national action plans.  

GHTC's statement on Agenda item 14: Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health at the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Executive Board (EB) meeting.Although the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health has been instrumental in guiding global efforts, countries must scale up their implementation of high-impact interventions. The Director General’s report highlights that malaria continues to be one of the leading causes of under-five mortality, draws attention to the “severe drug drought” in maternal health, and underscores the continued inequalities when it comes to access to quality care. While not highlighted by the report, we also know that newborns in the first 28 days of their lives are especially vulnerable to drug-resistant infections, with staggering rates of morbidity and disability directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). More broadly, one out of every five deaths due to AMR is in children, with 99.7 percent of those deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.With only five years to 2030, and many countries being off track to reach the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals related to maternal, newborn, and child mortality, we recommend that countries and WHO take the following actions:1. We call on member states to step up action to coordinate and increase investments in health technologies for women, scale up access to preventive tools and treatments, and include pregnant and lactating women in research and clinical trials to improve data quality and availability of therapeutics. As gaps in therapeutic options persist for pregnant and breastfeeding women, countries must prioritize efforts to accelerate the investigation, development, and introduction of better medicines for this population. 2. We urge member states to make investments in malaria research and innovation that include underserved populations, including children and pregnant and lactating women, given the many adverse health outcomes of malaria in pregnancy for both mother and baby, including on early childhood development.3. We welcome the efforts of the Global Accelerator for Paediatric Formulations Network, or GAP-f, and call on all countries and WHO to support its ongoing work, including facilitating the research and development of priority products on WHO’s Paediatric Antiretroviral Drug Optimization list. 4. We call on greater focus and alignment between this strategy and the Global Action Plan for AMR and urge WHO and member states to facilitate access to antibiotics and other treatment options for children. More research and development to combat drug-resistant infections is urgently needed.