Engaging the Private Sector in the Vaccine Roll Out
Jointly organized by the World Bank, Global Fund, WHO, the GFF - ACT-A Health Systems Connector Event
Engaging the Private Sector in the Vaccine Roll Out
Join on WebEx: Meeting ID: 160 132 3559 | Password Rgtd2Ka3
Background
Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tools (diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines). The ACT-A comprises four technical partnerships: three vertical pillars (diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines) and one transversal Health Systems Connector (HSC). Bottlenecks in key areas of health systems, such as financing, data, workforce, clinical care, supply chain, and partial engagement with communities in the COVID-19 response are limiting the effective deployment and use of COVID-19 tools. The ACT-A Health Systems Connector focuses on cross-cutting aspects of health systems to support the rapid deployment of new tools as they become available. These include capacities and infrastructure that need to be scaled up or upgraded to deploy COVID-19 tools, in addition to (nonproduct) system investments that will be required to complement the new tools.
Event Description and Objective
This event is a continuation of a country-oriented event series. It will provide an opportunity for country government officials and cross-organizational country teams to familiarize themselves with ACT-A Health Systems Connector technical content and firsthand country experience as they deal with the pandemic.
The objective is to enable experience-sharing on COVID-19 pandemic response, as well as to discuss health systems status, the challenges they face, and the lessons learned, while shaping the conversation to best address their needs.
Recent experiences in the countries with the largest outbreaks demonstrate that private sector capacity can play a crucial role in the response effort. To effectively address COVID-19, it is essential to partner with and leverage the private sector, which represents a sizeable share in the health systems of many countries and has a huge potential in delivering services. Recent and past history in successful immunization campaigns in LMIC shows that the private health sector – defined as both not- and for-profit organizations, either formal and informal – have played instrumental roles throughout the vaccine value chain.
As countries are planning and managing COVID-19 vaccines rollout to turn the pandemic's tide, issues arise on how to properly manage and speed up the immunization campaign, granting equal access to high quality and affordable vaccine for all.
The event will be the occasion to discuss country governance readiness in granting equitable access to a safe vaccine for all, defining missing gaps, challenges as well as opportunities in adopting a whole-of-society approach in mixed health systems. Lessons learnt from current country experiences on COVID-19 vaccine rollout from LMICs and from acquired knowledge on previous immunization programmes all over the world will lay the foundation to discuss why and how proper private sector engagement can be key to deliver UHC.
Program
- Introduction, HSC Private Sector Workstream Overview
Presenters: David Clarke, Team Leader, WHO Health System’s Governance and Policy Unit
- Country Experience: 40 minutes
Presenters: Gregory Rockson, Co-founder and CEO of mPharma – Ghana
Hon Carlito G. Galvez Jr., Chief Implementer of the National Task Force against COVID-19 – The Philippines
Albert Francis Domingo, Former Technical Assistant for the WHO Country Office in the Philippines
Barbara O’Hanlon, O’Hanlon Consulting – Country examples
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