Policies to Impact: March 2024

Welcome to the monthly newsletter from the Global Healthcare Alliance Accelerator (GHIAA)! You can also join our quarterly newsletter for a round-up of news delivered straight to your inbox, as well as follow us on LinkedIn and X for daily updates.

Meet the Team: Dr. Isaac Chikwanha

GHIAA board member Dr. Isaac Chikwanha is passionate about enhancing increasing access to high-quality health care and health products, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In his current role as the Senior Director for Access and Delivery at the Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) fund, he leads efforts to ensure equitable and affordable access to technologies funded by GHIT.

Isaac joined the GHIAA board in June 2023. “I had always admired GHIAA’s work and was excited about the opportunity to contribute to the organization’s vision—and to help ensure that more global health practitioners are aware of GHIAA and the MAPGuide,” he said.

“The MAPGuide is so valuable as a mechanism for promoting transparency in contract agreements, especially for publicly funded entities,” Isaac said. “Prior to the MAPGuide, those of us working in health shared contract language among ourselves, but the MAPGuide makes it public. And that’s critically important when it comes to enforcing equitable access policies.”

Prior to joining the GHIT fund, Isaac worked for Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), rising from a frontline medical doctor to Deputy Program Manager for the MSF Tokyo Cell, overseeing medical activities in the Asia-Pacific region and as a Medical Advisor for MSF Access Campaign in Geneva. A medical practitioner since 1997, he was trained as a medical doctor at the University of Zimbabwe and holds an MPH from the University of Sheffield School of Health and Related Research, UK.

Isaac is excited about the future growth of GHIAA. “I think that the next step is learning how we can build the capacity of ministries of health and ministries of finance to fully understand contractual clauses and other agreements that they are entering. The GHIAA team can help to build that capacity in LMICs in a tangible—and sustainable—way.”

• Julie is an invited speaker at the British Academy Conference on Resolving Vaccine Inequity. Hosted at the SOAS University of London from April 11-12, this year’s conference theme is Resolving Global Vaccine Inequality: Innovation, Capabilities and Governance. Julie will be speaking during the “Vaccine Nationalism, Vaccine Inequity, Production and IPR” session starting at 1:30pm BST on April 11 and will specifically address intellectual property rights, pharma product licensing, and global public health security. Registration - starting at just ￡6 for students - is open now.

• Julie recently participated in the Salzburg Global Seminar’s event, “Better Preparedness for the Next Pandemic: Developing Vaccine Access Models with Low- and Middle- Income Countries. ” Hosted in partnership with Dartmouth College's The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth. This program brings together senior representatives of health ministries, heads of procurement, healthcare practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from Africa to design a new model for multilateral vaccine procurement that ensures access to suitable and affordable vaccines for Low- and Middle-Income countries. Learn more about the program here.

GHIAA has published comprehensive comments and recommendations regarding the most recent negotiating texts for the Pandemic Agreement.

To read our commentary visit: https://lnkd.in/eEUdZAC9

For our previous commentaries on the Pandemic Accord, see: https://lnkd.in/g6m7EueP

We frequently update the MAPGuide? with new agreements and provisions. We welcome you to contribute your own agreements here. We accept anonymized and redacted content, as well as template and model agreements. Some of our latest additions include:

Population Council - TherapeuticsMD, Nestorone Contraceptive Ring, License Agreement

This license agreement, effective from July 2018, is between The Population Council, Inc., an international non-profit research organization dedicated to providing accessible healthcare solutions and understanding public health needs for developing countries, and TherapeuticsMD, Inc. , a pharmaceutical company specializing in women’s health. Under the Agreement, The Council grants TherapeuticsMD an exclusive license to develop, manufacture, commercialize and sell the Nestorone? (segesterone acetate)/ethinyl estradiol ring for human contraceptive indications in the United States. The license includes Council Patents and Council Know-how necessary for the manufacture and commercialization of the Licensed Product.

The Agreement includes commercialization and due diligence obligations for TherapeuticsMD including public announcement of a reduced price program for underrepresented communities as part of an Outreach Plan. Pricing to Public Organizations (defined as Title X family planning clinics) must not exceed a certain (redacted) proportion of Wholesale Acquisition Cost.

• We’re following Nina Schwalbe on X as she updates us on progress in the Pandemic Accord discussions
• We're watching "The Invisible Shield," the new documentary series on PBS about the history and hidden impact of public health
• The Endgame for Global Health Governance Negotiations, by David P. Filder in Think Global Health
• A New CEO at GAVI: Three Opportunities for Impact, by Morgan Pincombe and Janeen Madan Keller at the Center for Global Development
• “This is about all of us” – an interview with Roland Driece, co-chair of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body of the Pandemic Accord, news release from the World Health Organization
• Dispute over genomic databank undermines fight to thwart next pathogen, by Donato Paolo Mancini in the Financial Times
• The Global Fund and the WHO Pandemic Agreement, released by the Global Fund
• Insights From India on Expanding Global Vaccine Production, by Prashant Yadav in Think Global Health
• The WHO’s Push for Global mRNA Vaccine Access, by Amy Maxmen in Think Global Health

Questions? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].